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How the hell does Kubrick pull off Lolita in 19 friggin 62 and the director of this movie has to cut a bunch of scenes with sexual tension between the main characters for American audiences in 1994? How does that work?
shareHow the hell does Kubrick pull off Lolita in 19 friggin 62 and the director of this movie has to cut a bunch of scenes with sexual tension between the main characters for American audiences in 1994? How does that work?
First, Kubrick started as an American film director and had more control over his picture. Besson was trying for his first big American film with a major American company (Columbia), and the only cut he made at their request was the proposition scene, which generated nervous laughter from Columbia's test audience.
Second, the actress Kubrick chose was three years older than the character in Nabokov's book. Besson also had wanted an actress between the ages of 15 and 18 (what he asked for from his casting director), but was unable to find a suitable girl, opting instead for a much younger girl.
Besson himself revised the script to reflect a child mistaking paternal love for romantic love whose innocence was saved by a noble hit man, instead of a sexually-aware teenager who killed people herself and initiated sex with a cold killer like Viktor from Nikita. He kept a humorous montage where she used paint rounds on hits with Leon, but cut that 20-min. segment himself before ever showing the film to Columbia, probably because he thought the montage and celebration in the restaurant made the revised script less effective. In any case, Besson said the proposition scene was the only scene he took out because of Columbia.
Everything that he shot was eventually included in his "International Cut," but he still insists that the shorter theatrical release is his director's cut. share