Lady Chatterley's Lover is a sexually charged and erotic adaptation
Pulsing with passion and desire, Lady Chatterley’s Lover may even make you blush.
In the almost 100 years since DH Lawrence published his then-incendiary novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, it has remained not just relevant but urgent.
Pulsing with ideas about desire, sexuality and classism, this sensual film adaptation of Lawrence’s work by French filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre surfaces the most potent points.
It’s a tactile and robust movie, driven by an incredible performance by Emma Corrin, who, after her stunning turn as Princess Diana in season four of The Crown, continues to mount the argument that she is an exciting talent to watch.
She has that rare gift of immediately bringing you into her character’s space, evoking compassion and empathy.
Much like how readers would take Lawrence’s book discreetly into their bedrooms, away from prying eyes and judgment, de Clermont-Tonnerre’s film can be watched in your own room, wherever you can access your Netflix subscription.
Not that there’s anything seedy or “racy”, anything that needs to be hidden, about this version. It may be charged with eroticism – and there is indeed nudity and sex scenes aplenty – but it’s all very artful, and always grounded in whether it serves the story and the characters. Spoiler alert, it does.
If you’re unfamiliar with the story, it follows that of Constance (Corrin), a young woman of “good breeding” who marries Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Ducket). Not long after, he’s injured in the Great War and is confined to a wheelchair and unable to feel anything from his pelvis or legs.
Despite being in the prime of her youth, Constance tends to her husband, but she is increasingly frustrated by his neediness and control, and the isolation of their life. When she asserts some independence, he’s petulant.
When Mrs Bolton (Joely Richardson) comes on to help out, Constance is freed to be in her own mind – and body.
Clifford desires an heir and strikes up a bargain that she can have an affair. The agreement is that she must be discreet, and it must be with the “right sort”. There is no mistaking what the second stipulation means, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover is almost as much a story about elitism and class division as it is a heady romance.
Sub-plots involving Clifford’s “modernising” of the mine he owns and runs, and the exploitation of his workers that he values his chattel rather than humans, is threaded through the story as both a device to reflect his snobbiness and her compassion, as well as what it means for her to be with someone of a lower class.
But the romance is the overarching part and when Constance forms a bond with the estate’s gamekeeper, a war vet named Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell), the spark ignites and burns until it threatens to consume everything.
They’re like magnets, and can’t keep away from each despite the obvious perils. He knows he can’t give her anything (and he himself is separated from a wife who left him and won’t grant him a divorce) while she would be going against all convention in her rigid world.
Their passion is vividly captured by de Clermont-Tonnerre and it’s a seductive, highly charged and intoxicating affair.
Rating: 3.5/5
Lady Chatterley’s Lover is streaming now on Netflix
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