More honest or not, Lyne's version bears the uncomfortable atmosphere of soft-core porn. A most telling moment occurs midway through the film. Hers is a perfectly innocent impulse, an affectionate bright farewell. As she rises on tiptoe to kiss him, he evades her approaching lips and imprints a poetical kiss on her brow. In Lyne's version, Lolita races to Humbert and, in a lascivious slo-mo shot, leaps into his arms and wraps her legs around his body, her young buttocks quivering pertly at 48 frames per second.
Much spit is swapped in their full-facial snog.
Afterall, Lo's secondary suitor hasn't done anything to her that Humbert hasn't. Unlike Nabokov, Kubrick goes out of his way to stress that Quilty is not merely a writer, but a television writer. Humbert and Quilty are two sides of the same coin. Humbert believes he can seduce Lolita precisely because he is a sophisticated European aesthete. He believes Quilty cannot precisely because he is a low-class American pervert.