![]() ![]() DW Griffith’s child-woman ingénues such as Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh were “pseudo-nymphets” ( critic Andrew Sarris’s term), while Lolita was herself largely inspired by that most blatant of all paedophile fantasies, Shirley Temple. Nymphetmania has a long and hoary pedigree in Hollywood, and flourished years before Nabokov gave us the Lolita syndrome. We may also wince at precocious streetwise teens such as Jodie Foster’s prostitute (14) in Taxi Driver and Natalie Portman (13) in Luc Besson’s Leon, supposedly “wise beyond their years”, who seem to express nothing of a young girl’s reality or hopes – but everything of a director’s fantasies. We have begun to take a second look at the smarmy overtones of movies such as Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Louis CK’s now-shelved I Love You, Daddy, in which “protective” older men ogle daughter figures in utterly self-serving ways. ![]() It is no longer possible to rationalise as consensual certain egregious pairings, or to accept with equanimity the sexualisation of underage performers. But how young and how old? And will the leniency afforded such pairings survive the scrutiny of the #MeToo movement? The latter is usually played for the grotesque – Sunset Boulevard, The Graduate – while the double standard of ageing allows older men to exude a sex appeal not offered to their female counterparts. Somehow, daddy figures are more acceptable than old-enough-to-be-your-mother lovers, France’s current president notwithstanding. T he pairing of the older man and younger woman, in movies as in life, enjoys relative respectability. ![]()
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