DVD REVIEW: "Lady Chatterley"

Marina Hands and Jean-Louis Coullo'ch in one of the six explicit sex scenes in "Lady Chatterley."

Back in my teenage years, D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley Lover" was an underground treasure. It was still a couple years away from the censors' approval, so it couldn't be purchased by conventional means. And since at that age and time I was unaware of how to purchase anything unconventionally, I used to sneak quick peaks at copies purloined by friends. Quick it was, too, my friends, but then we all knew exactly what page to turn to first to read the "good" parts. We may not have had a great underground network with purchasing power but we had our own secret society and that was enough.

Later I went to college for a couple of years, traveled around the globe for many more and then went back to college where, lo and behold, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" had become part of the English literature curriculum. This time I read the entire book and was transfixed by Lawrence's ideas that animal impulses that result in lust can transform into genuine love. But even then I had no idea that the book I was reading was actually Lawrence's third version of this story and that two kinder and gentler versions had preceded it.

One of those kinder and gentler versions, the second one, was called "John Thomas and Lady Jane" and that version is the basis of Pascale Ferran's "Lady Chatterley," a film that doesn't seem quite worthy of all the recognition it received in France (winner of six Cesars--the French Oscar--including best picture, actress and screenplay, and nominated for six more), but still has a lot going for it.

First I will talk about what it has going for it. As the title of Lawrence's novel indicates, this is essentially a two-person story and the two main characters, Lady Connie Chatterley (Marina Hands) and the gamekeeper Parkin (Jean-Louis Coullo'ch) are inhabited perfectly by the actors playing these roles. Ms. Hands says more with her facial expressions and her eyes than many other actors could with a 10-page soliloquy. Mr. Coullo'ch brings a depth and sensitivity to a thankless part that did not come from Lawrence's prose but from deep within the actor himself. It is a smart acting choice because it makes us care for him more in the film's final scenes.

Ms. Ferran also wisely doesn't rush us through this story. The film's 2-hour, 48-minute running time is necessary to allow these two people to grow from wanton animal lust to transcendent love and, in the process, learn more about themselves and their place in the world. The running time also allows Ms. Ferran to explore the role nature can play in sex.

What the film doesn't have going for it are any other characters who even halfway believable or interesting. One of these is Connie's husband, Sir Clifford (Hippolyte Girardot) whose World War I wounds have left him paralyzed from the waist down. I have not read the book on which this film was based, but in "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Clifford was justly enraged when he discovered his wife's infidelities. Here the twit seems to go out of his way not to know the truth. Then there's his nurse, Mrs. Bolton (Helene Alexandridis) who always seems prepared to pounce on something any minute if there was only something around on which to pounce.

Finally there are--and I'm not sure how to say this without coming across like a prude--the nude scenes. Now I don't want to confuse the nude scenes with the sex scenes. The movie contains six (fortunately other reviewers counted them so I didn't have to) rather explicit sex scenes and they didn't bother me at all. In fact, I rather liked the way Ms. Ferran used these scenes to make a classical story seem more modern and relevant. And, of course, these scenes reveal the very nature of the characters themselves. But the full frontal nudity--of both sexes--came across as gratuitous. There is a long, slow scene in which Connie admires her nude body in the mirror that is in the films just so we in the audience can admire Ms. Hands' nude body (and, I will admit, I did admire it). Then there are a couple of scenes in which Connie makes comments about a rarely scene organ of Mr. Coullo'ch's that would lead one to believe Connie and Clifford never had sex before he was wounded. Plus there's an extended bit where Connie and Parkin frolic nude through the woods that left me convinced these folks lived in the least populated part of the English countryside. This scene served no purpose except to have two nude bodies on screen for an extended period of time. (They wind having sex in the mud in a scene that reminded me of a book, whose title I forgot decades ago, in which a young woman, whose boyfriend has just asked her to have sex with him on the beach, says completely innocently "But wouldn't the sand get into everything?")

The photography is stunning, the music is lyrical and all of Lawrence's ideas are here so all in all the scales are tilted more on plus side than the minus. And, in all honesty, it did feel more like the book I read in English Lit class than the scandalous pages I furtively read as a teen.

Grade: B