Those expecting titillation from this 1997 version of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel (first filmed in the Sixties with James Mason) will be sorely disappointed. For although the subject matter - paedophilia - is censor-incensing, and director Adrian Lyne (who made Fatal Attraction and 9 ½ Weeks) is not famous for his taste, the result is a poignant, if unsubtle, tale of tragic love. Jeremy Irons plays Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged teacher in late-Forties America who, traumatised by the love he lost as a teenager, becomes obsessed with the adolescent daughter of his landlady (Melanie Griffith). Irons is magnificent, and Dominique Swain brilliant as the child. Compelling.

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