heaves.
PEDERASTS ON PARADE!
LOLITA, directed
by Stanley Kubrick, 1963
CHICKEN HAWK:
MEN WHO LOVE BOYS, directed by Adi Sideman 1994
THE
PROFESSIONAL, directed by Luc Besson, 1994
Vladimir Nabokov introduced the world to a new term for an age-old phenomenon in his superlative novel, Lolita. Stanley Kubrick brought the eponymous nymphet to the screen in 1962 and though many variations on her story have wormed their way to the surface of America s consciousness, none so far have approached Kubrick's grasp on the essentials of pedophilia, 60s censorship notwithstanding.
Stanley Kubrick s LOLITA tells the story of Humbert Humbert (James Mason) and Delores "Lolita" Haze (Sue Lyon), the fiftyish pederast and the pubescent object of his desires. The story is told through Humbert's eyes; he paints their relationship with the hypnotic, manic tongue of a man possessed: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins... the tip of the tongue takes a trip that ends in T -- Lo-lee-ta." The only thing that stands between Humbert and his vorboten jailbait beloved is Lolita's mother, played with over-the-hill pouty brilliance by Shelley Winters.
Like Poe and others before him, the great Nabokov uses the power of an unreliable narrator to tell his tale (from Humbert s perspective, LOLITA is a beautiful love story). When the betrayal and exploitation at the heart of Humbert's obsession fully flowers, it's too late for the erstwhile nymphet. She's spent and ruined before her time.
The unreliable narrator returns with CHICKEN HAWK: MEN WHO LOVE BOYS. For anyone who hasn t heard of it, NAMBLA stands for the North American Man Boy Love Association. CHICKEN HAWK is as much about the opponents of this self-dubbed civil rights group of ruffians as about the pedophiles themselves. By refusing to editorialize, director Adi Sideman (actually making his NYU student film in the bargain) gives the subjects of his documentary just enough rope to hang themselves.
In a series of interviews, NAMBLA members open up about their preferences in what they believe to be an unbiased, even sympathetic, forum. Through contradictions, body language and slips of the tongue, creepy NAMBLA figurehead Leyland Stevenson and his menagerie give themselves away as a sweaty, self-centered, delusional klatch of dirty old men whose entire philosophy rests upon a single, obvious falsehood: that children are themselves sexual beings capable of making decisions that will cloud, if not shatter, the rest of their lives. Stevenson and his fellow NAMBLA-ites justify what they re doing by painting the children as predators and themselves as the prey.
The camera coldly records such unforgettable moments as Stevenson, while describing a "romantic night of camping" with a young boy, making the tell-tale slip of the tongue: "No lubricant was desired... er, required." A high point of the film is the gay rights rally into which a ragtag group of NAMBLA-ites insinuates itself. Offending even the most flamboyant participant, NAMBLA is righteously lambasted and sent packing. All involved insist that NAMBLA and its ilk represent the evil all gays are accused of.
Also look for former beat generation wannabe Allen Ginsberg defending NAMBLA s right to exist -- talk about the kiss of death.
What makes CHICKEN HAWK particularly disturbing, though, are neither the descriptions these pedophiles give of their conquests nor the eye-wateringly pungent crank calls recorded by the group's answering machine ("I'm gonna get you, you babyf***er..."), but the scenes of the aforementioned NAMBLA-officer cruising convenience stores and, like the animal of the title, closing in on what appears to be the weakest among the litter. It is through the peephole of these man-boy discourses that one sees the broader range of child molestation -- how, despite parental warnings and reports of brutal murder, children will almost always talk to strangers.
Just as the directors of both LOLITA and CHICKEN HAWK skillfully employ the use of an unreliable narrator, so does French director Luc Besson himself get caught up in his own fallacy with THE PROFESSIONAL. This love story is about a forty year-old assassin (or "Cleaner") named Leon (Jean Reno) and the 12 year-old nymphet the director falls in love with, Mathilda (Natalie Portman).
The main problem with THE PROFESSIONAL is that the film never recovers from the clumsy sexualization of 12 year-old Portman. Besson's camera fondles her young body like the fumbling hands of an overtime-working day care deviant while simultaneously begging us to buy the notion that Leon doesn t notice her budding sexuality. Her precociousness is not so much a tragic flaw as a rationalization by Besson to get her in bed with her fortyish costar.
What Besson has essentially done (besides aping his far superior past film, LA FEMME NIKITA) is remade LOLITA without getting the essential fact that despite her precociousness, Lolita is a helpless child set adrift. Like Lolita, Mathilda is set adrift; like Lolita, she's put in sexual situations -- but unlike Lolita, Mathilda seems unaffected by ANY of her experiences, including learning how to kill and (arguably) having her first sexual experience.
Unfortunately, THE PROFESSIONAL is too a shallow a film to follow any of its story threads to their logical conclusions. Even at its most stylish, the film's essential vapidity and carelessness get in the way of its meaningful intentions. The only thing Besson succeeds in, actually, is staging a few decent action sequences but these, alas, suffer from the same resounding falseness which colors the rest of the film.
Besson does show strength with his actors. Portman seems guided by some inner wisdom and Reno plays the Cleaner with an earnestness that puts the idiotic plot to shame.
All three movies are worth a go on 99 cent night at the local video store (THE PROFESSIONAL if only for the balletic action sequences), but all are definitely shocking, definitely not for children, and definitely not for the faint of heart.
Congratulations! You've read the sickest one yet (at least until "Boy Meets (Dead) Girl," which'll be here in a week); for that you get to read a BONUS REVIEW!
Another one? This and some of my other reviews were originally written for Eulogy Magazine, which will hopefully soon have a Web presence.
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