Lady Chatterley’s Lover

A suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion of DH Lawrence’s scan­dal-court­ing 1928 nov­el, ​‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ requires a sub­tle alche­my. On paper this tale of untram­melled libido tri­umph­ing over 20^th cen­tu­ry class bar­ri­ers seems eas­i­ly achiev­able. The novel’s once-taboo nature – it was unpub­lished for three decades before being sub­ject to a lengthy obscen­i­ty tri­al and bans around the world – has often worked against it, and adap­ta­tions of Lawrence’s grip­ping dra­ma often reduce it to bodice-rip­ping smut.

What dis­tin­guish­es Lau­re de Clermont-Tonnerre’s newest inter­pre­ta­tion from its pre­de­ces­sors is its deft, mature under­stand­ing of what makes both Lady Chat­ter­ley and her lover tick. The nov­el is built on the sex­u­al ten­sion between Lady Chat­ter­ley – an unhap­py, new­ly-wed wife of a baronet – and Oliv­er Mel­lors, the rugged game­keep­er who stalks her husband’s iso­lat­ed coun­try estate.

De Cler­mont-Ton­nerre has found two excel­lent actors to ensure that the sex­u­al ten­sion is as taut as pos­si­ble, even though it grad­u­al­ly slack­ens over the film’s two-hour shy run­time. Jack O’Connell hasn’t been giv­en a role as meaty as this since Yann Demange’s 2014 film ​’71 and he makes for a note-per­fect Mel­lors. He is both phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly con­vinc­ing, con­vey­ing the man’s intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty and viril­i­ty with­out ever descend­ing into car­i­ca­ture. The same can’t be applied to his wood­land cot­tage, which comes off more as a rus­tic Airbnb than a func­tion­ing gamekeeper’s residence.

In their first star­ring role after a Gold­en Globe-win­ning, turn as Princess Di in Net­flix’ behe­moth, The Crown, Emma Cor­rin makes for a com­pelling lead – indeed, on this evi­dence they have cement­ed their sta­tus as a com­plete star. Corrin’s screen roles to date have all been 20^th cen­tu­ry het­ero­sex­u­al women in dys­func­tion­al mar­riages, and this is per­haps their most nuanced per­for­mance to date. By hom­ing in on the human­i­ty of Lady Chat­ter­ley, referred to here as Con­nie, and tran­scend­ing the stuffi­ness of the peri­od set­ting, Cor­rin breathes new life into the char­ac­ter. Con­nie is a mod­ern woman, and this is achieved with­out David Magee’s script suc­cumb­ing to the desire to awk­ward­ly trans­pose con­tem­po­rary fem­i­nist ideals onto her.

If the film falls short in any area, it’s in its fail­ure to ful­ly embrace the novel’s deep­er themes. The surge of indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion plays a key role in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing Lord and Lady Chat­ter­ley, him being rapt by tech­no­log­i­cal advances and her being enam­oured with the beau­ty of nature. The direc­tor pays lip ser­vice to these ideas with­out ever engag­ing with them as key com­po­nents to Lawrence’s narrative.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but the sex is incred­i­ble. Cin­e­ma has been deprived of eroti­cism recent­ly, on-screen sex has become a depress­ing rar­i­ty, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover is restora­tive. It’s graph­ic; it’s sen­su­al; it’s inces­sant; it’s every­thing Lawrence wrote it to be. Two actors going at it com­mit­ted­ly on screen shouldn’t feel this unusu­al, but this refresh­ing film under­stands that, to quote Eyes Wide Shut, there’s some­thing very impor­tant that we need to do as soon as possible.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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