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Here we go...

This blog focuses on exploring the behaviors and relationships that are between older men and younger female counterparts. This concept is called the Lolita Complex. It originates from the novel written by the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov in 1955. In it, a middle-aged professor falls in love and becomes sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl.  Western culture resists acknowledging its subconscious interest in exotic images of young girls, yet this motif has been popping up more frequently in film and cinema over the past 30 years. The aim of this page is to explore how films choose to convey these relationships through narrative and cinematography. The films that will be analyzed are Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, and Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional.

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Léon: The Professional

dir. Luc Besson (1994) 

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Léon: The Professional 

dir. Luc Besson (1994)

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Léon: The Professional

dir. Luc Beson (1994)

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Léon: The Professional: Léon: The Professional is about a humble hitman Léon (Jean Reno), who saves a little girl named Mathilda (Natalie Portman) from a drug-related killing spree, and teaches her how to be a hitman. When Léon first meets Mathilda, it is in the stairwell of the building that they both live in. Mathilda has a bruise on her cheek that he immediately notices, and asks about. This shows that on some level, he is concerned for Mathilda’s well-being on a fatherly level. The music during this scene is child-like which emphasizes Mathilda’s age, further reinforcing the father/child motif. When the audience later learns that Mathilda’s father is un-kind and borderline abusive, her curiosity in Léon is perceived as an attempt to fill the loving role that her father will not provide. When Mathilda’s family is murdered, and Léon lets her into his apartment for shelter, the dynamic between the two of them shifts. Mathilda starts to show signs of infatuation with Léon, when she says he has a “cute name”. Léon is immediately made uncomfortable by her remark, which is a reoccurring theme throughout the movie. Mathilda will make a comment on her feelings for Léon, then he is immediately caught off-guard and reacts like he was not expecting such a remark. There is even a scene when Mathilda is in a dress and makeup resembling the seductive Marilyn Monroe, and Léon is visually uncomfortable by the idea that she is as sexually mature as Marilyn. However, one of the most notable instances is when Mathilda claims that she is in love with Léon. He tries to tell her that she doesn’t know what she is talking about because she is so young, but she insists that her feelings for him are true. Mathilda continues to do this throughout the film, where she will make advances on Léon, usually through dialogue, and Léon will state how it is inappropriate. However, it is important to note that Léon never out-right denies that he also has feelings for Mathilda. Which makes their dynamic even more interesting, because while Mathilda is making advances on him that he could easily accept, but doesn’t. This causes the audience to side with and like Léon because he does not take advantage of Mathilda’s naïve attitude towards a relationship between the two of them. This idea is solidified later in the film when he shuts down Mathilda’s suggestion that they should have sex. This is a very pivotal moment in the film, because the director chooses to show Léon as being level-headed. It also proves that Léon’s feelings for Mathilda align more with being a caring fatherly figure rather than a romantic partner. If he had been Mathilda’s romantic partner, the audience’s feelings about his death at the end of the movie would be very different. But since he didn’t take advantage of Mathilda, the audience feels saddened at his loss.

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American Beauty 

dir. Sam Mendes (1999)

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American Beauty 

dir. Sam Mendes (1999)

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American Beauty

dir. Sam Mendes (1999)

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American Beauty: Sam Mendes’s Oscar-winning film American Beauty tells the story of a middle-class family going through the trials and tribulations that come with suburban life. The main character arc follows Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) who goes through a mid-life crisis after being engulfed with infatuation for a young girl named Angela (Mena Suvari) who is his daughter Janie’s (Thora Birch) best friend from school. This crush that Lester develops for Angela triggers a string of events that turn the world of the Burnham household upside down. Lester quits his job and starts taking up activities that are more common of a teenager in high-school, such as smoking marijuana, getting a job at a fast-food joint, buying toys, and being rebellious towards his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) with whom he is also sexually frustrated with. When Lester first sees Angela, it is at Janie’s high school, during a basketball half-time show. The scene becomes very thematic, depicting Lester’s mind as reality. All the sudden, it is just them two in the entire gym, Lester shrouded by shadow in the stands and Angela in the spotlight. The lighting on Lester’s face suggests a voyeuristic tone, with his eyes being lit up as if he was looking through a closet door. This also hints that he tries to keep his thoughts and fantasies about Angela hidden, even though later in the movie we see that it is obvious to outsiders. Many of Lester’s fantasies about Angela revisit this theme of shadowing the setting, and having her covered in roses, signaling that it is happening inside of his mind. Because these scenes are the most artistically done in the film, it brings the question to what the audience should think about his fantasies. As opposed to thinking that they are perverted and weird, the audience is subjected into thinking that they are beautiful. Later in the film, Lester overhears that Angela would have sex with him if he worked out a little more, which throws him into an obsessive cycle of lifting weights in his garage. This highlights that Angela is antagonizing the situation while Lester is willing to do anything to appeal to her. Another important note to highlight is that one of Angela’s worst fears is to be considered ordinary. This comes into play later in the film when Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), the next-door neighbor, calls her ordinary to intentionally provoke her. This puts her in a fragile state where she is insecure and vulnerable. In a later scene when Lester tries to comfort her, she is re-affirmed of her confidence when he begins to advance on her. Lester is not aware of how vulnerable she is at that moment, but later becomes aware when she confides in him that she is a virgin. Up until that point, he was un-dressing her, but after she confesses he snaps out of it, and becomes oddly protective of her purity as if he was her father. This scene has an underlying redemptive tone so that the audience does not think negatively of Lester. However, shortly after this redemption scene, Lester is shot dead due to a separate story arc not related to the Lolita complex being scrutinized in this analysis. Lester’s death is un-surprising, since the audience knows it is imminent since the start of the movie. But the ideology behind his death is quite dramatic. It shows that Lester, a middle-aged man who developed lustful feelings towards a teenager, deserved to be killed. This statement disapproves of the Lolita complex and its underlying tones.

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Lost in Translation

dir. Sofia Coppola (2003)

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Lost in Translation

dir. Sofia Coppola (2003)

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“Let’s never come here again because it would never be as much fun.“

Lost in Translation (2003) dir. Sofia Coppola

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Lost in Translation: Lost in Translation is Sofia Coppola’s masterpiece in which an older, lonely movie star Bob named Harris (Bill Murray) meets the youthful Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) at a hotel located in Tokyo. Both of American decent, they find themselves in Japan, where not only are they exposed to a completely different culture, but are also subject to a huge language barrier. Bob is in Tokyo to promote a Japanese whiskey, which he is reluctant to do; and Charlotte is in Tokyo because she followed her fairly-new husband there on his photography ventures. In the film, Charlotte is unsure of her marriage, while Bob has been married for 25 years, but is bored and lonely. Amidst both of their predicaments, they meet each other in the hotel bar and form a bond that is not quite romantic, but still suggestive. This relationship between the characters is classified as a Lolita complex because Bob is much older than the 23-year-old Charlotte. However, in this case, Bob is not explicitly taking advantage of Charlotte, since she is above the age of what western culture deems to be a consenting adult. In fact, neither character is trying to take advantage of the other, which makes this situation unique from the typical Lolita complex. However, the age gap is still something that much of society would see as taboo. Coppola brings forth this taboo by making the characters find each other by chance, and forming a relationship based purely on the fact that they can communicate clearly to each other and relate to the other’s feelings of being completely lost in a foreign land. This social climate that Coppola sets up for Bob and Charlotte, in a way, justifies the bond that they share despite their age difference because the audience can understand the basic human need to be able to communicate and share interests with someone. In that respect, their relationship is special because although they are not physically intimate with each other, they open themselves up to one another in a way that is honest and pure. Their honesty with each other in the film is very prevalent, a point of interest being when Charlotte expresses her jealousy towards one of Bob’s one-night-stands because she is closer to his age than she is. The resolution of their relationship comes forth when Bob is leaving Tokyo to go back to the United States, while Charlotte still has some time left before she and her husband follow suit. Bob and Charlotte’s last encounter ends with a tight embrace followed by a kiss, which as discussed earlier, is consensual. This moment leaves the audience feeling saddened by the fact that they will no longer be able to enjoy each other’s company, and that they will most likely never see each other again. This act of making the audience sympathize with these characters but ultimately getting disappointed reinforces an ideology that the age difference between them could not happen practically, and that it was only meant to be short term.