Long delayed, this new version of Nabokov's masterpiece finally gets its North American theatrical release after running on cable's Showtime channel. Forget the insinuations about its lack of merit and quality, and discount the allegations of child pornography that have been lobbied at the film thus far. With "Lolita", Adrian Lyne has finally fashioned a film that is as much about heart as it is about flashy, button-pushing issues.

An English professor, Humbert, rents a room from Mrs Haze (Melanie Griffith) and is immediately entranced by her young, precocious daughter, Delores, with whom he eventually falls madly in love and becomes obsessed with. When Mrs Haze dies in a freak accident, Humbert takes Lolita under his care and into his bed, all the time torn by guilt and a lust he cannot overcome. When a mysterious stranger, Clare Quilty (Frank Langella) begins to beckon to the young girl, Humbert slowly begins to lose his mind, and things eventually spiral into madness and destruction.

The classic story about a man driven mad by his barbaric love for a nymphet has been turned into a surprisingly elegant and restrained character study by Lyne. Those expecting the kind of trashy excesses and glossy, superficiality of his "Fatal Attraction" or "Indecent Proposal" should avoid this film. For once, Lyne seems genuinely concerned with the emotional lives of his characters, and it shows. Although the film is glossy and photographed masterfully, it also has a general tone of melancholy and a strongly moral point of view which one does not expect. Eschewing the opportunities available to him with today's classification system, Lyne's film tastefully depicts the troubling sexual relationship between Humbert (Jeremy Irons) and Delores aka Lolita (Dominique Swain) with minimal nudity and suggestiveness. Instead, he chooses to focus on the disintergrating trust and affections between them, and delves into Humbert's guilt-ridden psyche to great effect.

Lyne is ably supported in his art film quest by Jeremy Irons, an actor who was born to play Humbert if there ever was one. With his pale, unhealthy pallor and manic eyes, Irons manages to convey every thought on the script's narration by silent looks and gestures. His impressive performance is expected, given his demonstrated ability to depict characters with tormented inner lives and given to self-punishment. As Mrs Haze and Quilty, Melanie Griffith and Frank Langella are given very little screen time, and their characters seem like plot devices rather than fully developed individuals. Griffith gives a performance which is sometimes jarring and inappropriate to the overall tone of the film, but she is given very little to work with and is dispatched off early in the film. Langella is also painted in broad strokes as some kind of sinister villain, and his performance is inhibited by the script's framing of Quilty.

The best acting in the film comes from Dominique Swain, a total unknown when cast who's since moved on to other features. Bearing a striking resemblance to Kirsten Dunst (the director's original choice for the role), Swain gives the sort of debut performance which is wise beyond her years and astonishing in its accuracy. While she may never win any awards, she should be congratulated for capturing the mood swings and mounting desperation of Lolita as Nabokov's pen created her. The girl-woman embodied by Swain's performance is every bit as tantalising, disturbing and sad as the one born out of the mind of a literary giant, and Lyne's "Lolita" works, to a large extent, because of the dual performances of Irons and Swain.

Elegaic, stylish and genuinely resonant with emotion, Adrian Lyne's finally made a film, not a movie. The question is whether "Lolita" will find the audience it deserves - one who might shun the film because of its bad press, its troubled path to the US cinemas, its questionable pedigree.

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