Lady Chatterley's Lover
After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.
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- Cast:
- Sylvia Kristel , Shane Briant , Nicholas Clay , Ann Mitchell , Elizabeth Spriggs , Pascale Rivault , Anthony Stewart Head
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Reviews
Pretty Good
People are voting emotionally.
How sad is this?
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Lady Chatterley's Lover is understandably controversial but it is also a compelling read, though not a personal favourite. This film is not exactly terrible as there are some good things to see on display but the maligning it has gotten is as understandable as the book being controversial. The photography mostly has a nostalgic quality to it while the costumes and sets are exquisite in colour and detail. The score is seductive and hauntingly beautiful, Sylvia Kristel is a real beauty, the second half is an improvement over the first half with some appropriately steamy moments and Nicholas Clay as well as being astonishingly handsome and sexy is quite good as Oliver. Unfortunately Kristel's acting talents do not translate here, throughout she is very wooden and bland, while on the other side of the scale Shane Briant's hammy over-acting grates after a while. The supporting cast, and there are some talented actors here, are unable to do much with characters that are written to caricatures(blander than that in some cases). Some of the sexy moments are sensual but too many and most of them verge on lowbrow and too much like a porn film, the book is an explicit one but it's not that trashed up. The script is very underwritten and banal, it is difficult to take seriously anything that the actors say, while the storytelling is really dull with non-existent passion in the first half, the main reason being that while the basic story of the book is intact, the prose, characterisations and passion(mostly) are barely scarce. Some of the editing looks hastily-put together too. All in all, Lady Chatterley's Lover looks good but it is dull and underwritten, and takes the sexual nature of the book to extremes, well at least to me it did. 4/10 Bethany Cox
Better than expected version of the old smutty D.H. Lawrence story of a posh bit having an affair with a rough games-keeper.To be honest, I'd probably say the BBC version with Sean Bean around 1995 was a lot more sleazier. Most of the sex here is done in a jokey style, if that makes sense. Kristel is dubbed I bet you. I've not looked at IMDb.com yet, but I'm betting she was. Nicholas Clay is hilarious in his role as Mellors. It's like a porn star version of Gazza when he talks. You wouldn't think that accent comes from his mouth.Bloody excellent soundtrack too. Current searching to see if it available anywhere.Mildly recommended.
Class consciousness is the thematic excuse for this very Victorian-era story of the wife of a debilitated English aristocrat. The wife has certain "needs" that cannot be met by her husband, who is paralyzed from the waist down. So, she finds what she needs in the grounds-keeper, a ruggedly handsome man. Visual eroticism is the real theme, of course.There's not a lot to the story. The whole thing could have been neatly told in thirty minutes. Here, it's terribly drawn out, with scenes that are way too lengthy. What's really annoying is the vanity that characters exhibit. Lady Chatterley (Sylvia Kristel), in particular, is obsessed with her own body. Partially nude, she stares vainly at herself in a mirror. For his part the grounds-keeper (Nicholas Clay) likes to do outdoor chores with his shirt off, convenient for any sensual woman who just happens to be strolling by. It's all rather obvious and superficial. Only toward the end does the story actually get interesting.I do like the majestic musical score. And the cinematography isn't bad at all, with some good outdoor scenes in the fog. There are lots of close-up camera shots, and quite a few extreme close-ups. This film is obviously a Sylvia Kristel vehicle. But her acting is stilted and self-conscious.Maybe the film was sexually daring in its time. By today's standards, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is quite tame. I would mostly describe it as slow, drawn-out, and dull, with characters who are annoyingly self-centered and vain.
Pretty typical Golan & Globus production with better than average art direction and cinematography. The estate is beautiful--as is Sylvia Kristel--but the adaptation is flat and whole thing feels flabby.A bit of sex goes with the story, of course, and it's done well enough; but it's nothing like Kristel's soft core films. The acting is competent thruout, and the filmmakers take pains to maintain the essence of the English class struggle. But some of the jealousy and social indignation feels contrived.I loved Lord Chatterly's gas-powered wheelchair for zipping around the grounds, altho why he didn't install an elevator in the mansion is a mystery.