Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022)

I've heard there is a general consensus that this adaptation from the director of The Mustang, may be the best film take on the famous novel by DH Lawrence. While I enjoyed watching this quite beautiful film it did make me wonder if the ultimate film adaptation is still waiting to happen. The film is lush and romantic with genuine affection for its source and for its characters, but there were times I felt the film felt rushed or muted in some of its themes. Still I did come away affected by it, especially in its swooning final moments.

The first act of the film sort of rushes to it's premise, setting out who's who and establishing quickly their positions and points of view. It's all very effective but it often feels rote and less organic than I might have enjoyed. Once the film gets to the meet of it, Lady Catterley's Lover focuses on its two romantic subjects with a delightfully rose coloured eye. de Clermont-Tonnerre is making a romance and approaches it all from that view, the sexuality, the passion, the emotion. To use the Greek categorizations it is all from a very pragma and less eros. 

For me this hyperfocus was a bit of a weakness. The novel this is based on was infamous in its time (perhaps even today) in its exploration of sexuality and the celebration of erotic passion, often banned and condemned for the way it portrays sexual urges and satisfaction as not only valid but valuable. The film shifts this to tie it all in essentially to a tool for monogamous love building. The film contrasts Lady Chatterley's sex less love (presented as tolerable friendship) with her husband with her sex filled love with her games-keeper (portrayed as full and whole) instead of examining the ways she can have different loves with different people. And the sex, while the film doesn't shy away from it, has none of the shock power that the novel had in its time. I felt there might have been value in finding a way to trigger the audience in ways similar to the ways the novel did. But here the sex scenes, shot so beautifully and lovingly, is there not to challenge us but to woo us. They are enticing, pulling our hearts into their love so we are enraptured. 

This provides the film with a narrow view that the Lady and the games-keeper belong together and the trappings of her marriage are. holding her back. It feels very modernly standard. Lord Chatterley becomes a villain standing in her way instead of another actor caught in the rigid expectations of British society also stifled by all the rules. His perspective isn't examined in any depth. He has lost the use of his limbs, and perhaps his own sexuality, but the film never touches on his loss, even as a tool for developing his villainy. His proposal to her to find another lover to impregnate her is just given without us understanding how he got there. It is used to show him as not caring for her (he is singularly focused on getting an heir in any way possible) instead of presented as a human being who is managing his own losses and passions. 

But the film is strongest when it focuses on the love between its central characters and it is beautifully shot and executed. Again all of this is to justify for a very 21 century audience the giving-it-all-up-for-love ending is so powerful, but it feels like this is reducing the literary classic to a bit of YA emotion instead of exploring the power of sexuality boldly as the novel did. So for me, while this adaptation was good for what it was, I hold out hope for a Lady Chatterley's Lover adaptation that rocks us as deeply as its legacy deserves.  

Lady's Chatterley's Lover

Starring: Jack O'Connell, Emma Corrin, Matthew Duckett, Joely Richardson

Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre

Writer: David Magee