movie review lady chatterley's lover

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

D.H. Lawrence’s novel does not start with plot points or scene-setting. Oh, no. In the opening paragraph, Lawrence bellows into a megaphone: “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, and we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.” Written in the aftermath of the first world war, with Europe in ruins, this passage was literally “words to live by.”

To say it another way, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not just a sexy love story. Yes, there is steamy infidelity but the real point (which was lost in the ensuing decades-long scandal surrounding the book) is integrating body and mind as a way of reconnecting to our purest impulses, and in so doing, maybe healing the whole world. Lawrence wore his Thomas-Hardy-Walt-Whitman influences on his sleeve. Of course, at the end of the day, the reason the book scandalized generations was because of all that throbbing pulsing sex, all those rising organs and enigmatic fluids, the Edenic orgasms, plus a couple of f-bombs (used as verbs, not adjectives, a crucial distinction).

Lawrence’s book has been adapted for screens big and small many times, to varying degrees of success. The plot is well known and isn’t all that original (a rich woman hooks up with her manly gardener), and there are landmines everywhere in the material. If an adaptation just focuses on the hot sex, then you’re missing what Lawrence was getting at the “cataclysm” of war, the dangers of industrialization, the growing class conflict, and the myriad ways humanity has suffered spiritually from prioritizing mind over body. This new adaptation, directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre , avoids the landmines remarkably well. The film shimmers and breathes, leaving space for discovery.

Connie Reid ( Emma Corrin ) has a couple of love affairs under her belt when she marries Baronet Clifford Chatterley ( Matthew Duckett ), right before he heads off to fight in the Great War. Connie was raised in a modest slightly bohemian family, so becoming “ Lady Chatterley ” is a huge change. She is removed from London, from her sister Hilda ( Faye Marsay ), to live in the massive Chatterley estate. When Clifford returns home from the war, he is paralyzed from the waist down and needs full-time care. Connie loves him and does her best. However, she’s a young woman with an impotent husband who shows no interest in getting creative about sexual pleasure. He wants an heir though, so he suggests she take on a lover, not for pleasure, of course, but for impregnation. Connie is devastated. She’s aching for affection and touch. Then she gets a glimpse of Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper ( Jack O'Connell ). And with barely half a dozen words spoken between them, they hook up. He is not the aggressor or initiator. She is. He is more conscious of the class difference than she is. He calls her “m’lady” in a tone of deep respect and has a hard time dropping it after they’ve been intimate. Class awareness is engrained in him.

Before you know it, the love affair has heated up to such an extent that Connie’s hours-long “walks” might arouse suspicion. Clifford spends most of his time with business associates, discussing the protests erupting in the mines in their district. (An echo of Lawrence’s concerns about the damaging effects of the Industrial Revolution is present.) Clifford might not notice that something is going on with his wife, but Clifford’s nurse-maid Mrs. Bolton ( Joely Richardson ) certainly does. Her alert glances at Connie’s disheveled hair and glowing cheeks spark the film with dread about what will happen when this love affair is revealed, because of course it must be revealed.

With a screenplay by David Magee (“ Finding Neverland ,” “ Life of Pi “), “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” takes its time with all this. The lovers may have sex almost immediately, but after that, they’re on a path of discovery. Sex isn’t just sex, and this is one of the main accomplishments of Clermont-Tonnerre’s sensitive and even delicate approach, as well as the openness of Corrin and O’Connell. We live in a moment where grownup sex has practically vanished from the silver screen. There was a big Twitter “discussion” once about sex scenes, and several people agreed that sex scenes were only okay “if they advance the plot.” That should come as a surprise to “ Don't Look Now .” Human beings don’t have sex to advance the plot. Sex is a big part of many people’s lives. In “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” the sex is not generic. It is specific to these two people, and the specificity makes it erotic. You don’t realize how rare something like this is until you see it done well.

The film was shot with a quicksilver freshness by Benoît Delhomme . There are no stately shots; there is nothing formal or slow. Instead, there’s lots of handheld camera work, lots of lens flares, and the camera chasing after Connie as she jumps across the green fields. The woods where Connie and Oliver meet up are a primeval forest, where everything—even the light—has a tactile quality. Isabella Summers’ score enhances emotions instead of underlining them.

Both Corrin and O’Connell are marvelous here. Connie and Oliver have been struggling underwater all their lives, and they didn’t even realize it until they met. Now that they’ve met, they can finally breathe. The way Corrin and O’Connell slowly open up to each other, you can see the relationship deepening under their feet with every moment. This requires such openness and accessibility on the actors’ parts. Something like “Lady Chatterley’s” Lover requires the audience to be on the lovers’ side, even if what the lovers are doing is wrong. If it’s a doomed love, like Ilsa’s and Rick’s in “ Casablanca ,” you have to “buy in” to their connection, and weep when it cannot be. In “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” ugly gossip starts to spread, and it’s painful to think of Connie and Oliver’s Eden being spoiled. This is due almost entirely to Corrin and O’Connell’s breathtaking open work with one another.

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s second feature. Her first film was in 2019’s “ Mustang ,” starring Matthias Schoenaerts as a prison inmate participating in a rehabilitation program involving the taming of wild mustangs. “Mustang” was one of the hidden gems of 2019, with Schoenaerts giving a great performance as a violent man filled with shame about his violent past. “Mustang” has the same tactile quality as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” and the same happening-in-real-time energy. You feel you are running alongside the characters, trying to catch up with them on their journeys forward. “Mustang” was a much smaller movie than “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” although it had some very complicated elements, like all those wild mustangs. Clermont-Tonnerre handles the far more ambitious “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” with confidence and alive-ness, and if the film slackens a little bit when the gossipy walls-closing-in scenes begin, it doesn’t take away from the main event: Corrin and O’Connell, lying on the grass in the forest, their bodies pale against the thick green, breathing as one. It’s sneakily profound.

In 1925, Lawrence wrote, “Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn’t like it—if he wants a safe seat in the audience—let him read somebody else.” Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Emma Corrin, Jack O’Connell, the whole cast and crew, puts us “in the thick of the scrimmage.” You could get lost in there and never come out.

In theaters today and available on Netflix on December 2nd.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O’Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master’s in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Emma Corrin as Lady Constance Chatterley
• Jack O’Connell as Oliver Mellors
• Matthew Duckett as Clifford Chatterley
• Joely Richardson as Mrs. Bolton
• Ella Hunt as Mrs. Flint
• Faye Marsay as Hilda
• Nicholas Bishop as Ned

Cinematographer

• Benoît Delhomme
• David Magee

Writer (based on the book by)

• D.H. Lawrence
• Géraldine Mangenot
• Isabella Summers
• Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre

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‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ Review: When Connie Met Ollie

The new Netflix adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s once-controversial novel is both steamy and decorous.

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By A.O. Scott

Now that banning books is coming back into fashion , it might be a good time to revisit “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” one of the most notoriously suppressed novels of the 20th century. D.H. Lawrence’s book, finished a few years before his death in 1930, was legally published in Britain uncensored only in 1960. According to a famous verse by Philip Larkin , “sexual intercourse began” sometime between that date and the release of “the Beatles’ first LP.”

Be that as it may, there is quite a lot of sexual intercourse in the novel’s pages, presented with a descriptive candor and psychological insight that shocked the censors and excited generations of readers. Film adaptations followed the loosening of restrictions around onscreen sex, and have included a soft-core 1981 Eurotrash classic starring Sylvia Kristel , a 1993 BBC mini-series and Pascal Ferran’s lyrical 2007 French-language art film . Now we can add Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s Netflix version, at once steamy and decorous, which splits the difference between forbidden pleasure and English-class homework.

Emma Corrin, recently Princess Diana in Season 4 of “The Crown” (speaking of Netflix), again plays an independent-minded young woman trapped in a cold aristocratic marriage. It doesn’t start out that way. Clifford Chatterley (a finely tuned Matthew Duckett) strikes his new bride, Constance Reid, as a kind and progressive fellow. He’s also a baronet, master of an estate near a coal-mining village in the Midlands. On their wedding day, Connie tells her sister, Hilda (Faye Marsay), that Clifford makes her feel safe.

He’s also a soldier in uniform, on leave from the front. When he returns from World War I, paralyzed from the waist down, he and Connie move to Wragby, the family seat, and try to adjust to unanticipated hardships. Clifford writes a novel — Connie types the manuscript — and then turns his attention to managing the land and modernizing the mines. His wife, the daughter of an itinerant artist and accustomed to a life of culture and sociability, languishes in the countryside and buckles under the burden of caring for Clifford. Until, that is, she meets Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell), Wragby’s newly hired gamekeeper, who has returned from the war to raise pheasants and read James Joyce.

The affair that ignites between Oliver and Connie transgresses boundaries of class and norms of propriety, the first more strikingly than the second. Connie’s adultery was Clifford’s idea at first, though the studly gamekeeper was hardly the partner he envisioned. Eager for an heir to carry on the Chatterley name, Clifford proposed a discreet tryst with no strings or complications, and with a man of suitable station. The idea shocks Connie, and while it’s not really the catalyst for what happens with Oliver, it does create a vague sense of permission, a breath of oxygen that helps a spark of attraction burst into flame.

To Lawrence, lust was powerful — even overpowering — but never simple, a force that could override reason and social convention that was nonetheless packed with meaning and constructive possibility. Clermont-Tonnerre, working from David Magee’s script, shows a lot of sex — and Corrin and O’Connell generate an intensity beyond the sighing and squirming that passes for hot stuff in most mainstream movies — but the sensuality remains stubbornly skin deep.

That may be inevitable. The ubiquity of naked bodies onscreen has drained away the power of such images to shock, and also to mean anything. The real drama of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” now lies elsewhere, in the systems of power that trap Oliver and Constance and in the lovers’ rebellion against them. Oliver, in spite of his military record (he left the army as a full lieutenant) and his intelligence, is stuck in the deferential, dependent role of Clifford’s servant. Connie, for all her talent and ingenuity, has no social identity beyond her ladyship. But both she and Oliver understand themselves to be free people.

Sex is an assertion of that freedom, but the key that unlocks their cages isn’t so much sex as the refusal of shame. Even in the forests and meadows around Wragby, their carrying on can’t escape detection forever. Clifford’s caretaker, Mrs. Bolton (Joely Richardson, who played Lady Chatterley in the BBC mini-series), is one of those people on whom nothing is lost. Before long, gossip and scandal threaten the erotic idyll.

“It’s a love story,” Mrs. Bolton ultimately decides, and Magee and Clermont-Tonnerre’s adaptation emphasizes the romance of Lawrence’s book over the radicalism of his vision. This “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is faithful to the novel, while also revealing how safe, how domesticated, it has become.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover Rated R. Sexual intercourse. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Summary Based on the classic D.H. Lawrence novel, a story well ahead of its time, we follow the life of Lady Chatterley (Emma Corrin), a woman born to a life of wealth and privilege, who soon finds herself married to a man that she eventually falls out of love with. Lady Chatterley engages in a torrid affair with a gamekeeper (Jack O'Connell) on ... Read More

Directed By : Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre

Written By : David Magee, D.H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover

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Emma Corrin

Connie reid, jack o'connell, oliver mellors, matthew duckett, clifford chatterley, joely richardson, mrs. bolton, faye marsay, anthony brophy, sir malcolm reid, rachel andrews, eugene o'hare, jonah russell, nicholas bishop, alistair findlay, sir geoffrey chatterley, sandra huggett, ellie piercy, mrs. wheedon, rachel pedley, mrs. thompson, baby josephine, marianne mcivor, mrs. warren, christopher jordan, harrison mcharron, strong worker interviewee, holly dennis, kelly martin, critic reviews.

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Lady Chatterley's Lover Reviews

• 67   Metascore
• 2 hr 6 mins
• Watchlist Where to Watch

A story well ahead of its time, We follow the life of Lady Chatterley, a woman born to a life of wealth and privilege, who soon finds herself married to a man that she eventually falls out of love with. Lady Chatterley engages in a torrid affair with a gamekeeper on their English estate, discovering more desire and intimacy than she thought possible. When she realizes that she has fallen heart and soul, she breaks all traditions of the day and seeks happiness with the man she loves.

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‘lady chatterley’s lover’ review: emma corrin and jack o’connell bring classic characters to steamy new life.

Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel about an upper-class woman’s affair with a working-class man, scripted by David Magee, premiered in Telluride.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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Thr critics pick the best films from the fall festivals, 'nickel boys' trailer stars daveed diggs, aunjanue ellis-taylor in adaptation of pulitzer-winning novel, lady chatterley's lover.

The movie, which Netflix will bring to theaters in November and to its streaming service the following month, is true to Lawrence’s idealization of sex and nature, in invigorating ways. Screenwriter David Magee, whose screenplay for Life of Pi sapped the magic from an entrancing novel, and whose Finding Neverland script veered between overstatement and inertia, finds his groove here with a smart streamlining of the source material that accentuates the positive while maintaining the book’s observations about class and, above all, sensuality.

The movie opens during World War I, as newlyweds Constance Reid (Corrin) and Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett) prepare for his return to the front. In short order he’s back home, his battle injuries leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and turning his bride, who’s at first willing, into his only caretaker at Wragby, his estate in the Midlands. They had discussed children on their wedding night, and neither was particularly gung-ho, but now, with Clifford impotent and the matter of the family legacy brought into sharp relief, he suggests that she find someone else to impregnate her, and they’ll raise the child as theirs. Modern!

The helmer, working again with The Mustang ’s editor, Géraldine Mangenot, certainly stacks the deck; it’s clear from the get-go that Clifford is Not the One for Connie, however devoted she may be, however eagerly she types his novel and does her hopeful best to adjust to their situation. She assures her skeptical sister, Hilda (Faye Marsay), that her groom is progressive — and so he turns out to be, to a point, with his unorthodox suggestion for how to build a family. He, um, plants a seed, and the lustiness with which it blossoms once Lady Chatterley meets Mellors startles the characters but makes perfect sense.

O’Connell ( Seberg ) conveys how gun-shy the gamekeeper is, having returned from his stint as an army officer to a marriage in tatters. He lives a solitary life in his stone cottage on the estate, reading Joyce and breeding pheasants (symbolism not to be ignored). In a beautifully played scene, Connie holds a days-old chick in her hands and is overcome by emotion. From there, it’s off to the races, and frequent, rapturous rendezvous in the woods.

As to the people around Lady Chatterley, Mrs. Bolton, the caretaker who eventually relieves Connie of her nursemaid duties, still talks about her miner husband’s cruel death a quarter-century earlier, as if it were last month. She’s played by Joely Richardson, who portrayed Lady Chatterley in Ken Russell’s 1993 BBC miniseries. Here she’s subtle and moving as someone clinging to the past and, presumably, to social convention. When push comes to shove, though, Mrs. Bolton upends expectations, in contrast to Mrs. Flint (Ella Hunt), the schoolteacher who eagerly befriends Lady Chatterley but can’t get past notions of middle-class respectability when rumors about Connie and Mellors start circulating.

No less than love and sex, courage is at the core of this iteration of Lady Chatterley’s Lover . Secretly, Connie and Mellors, each still married to someone else, forge a partnership of equals — beyond their class distinctions, beyond their roles as man and woman. It’s the most idealistic notion in the story. “Are you afraid?” Connie asks Mellors soon after they’ve begun. “I bloody well am,” he says, without a moment’s hesitation. Lady Chatterley has met her match.

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Lady Chatterley's Lover Reviews

As it is, this is a terrifically acted and exquisitely shot adaptation that nonetheless feels a little bland.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2024

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a powerful and passionate depiction of intimacy and pleasure, which provides an idealistic perspective of the story.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

Emma Corwin and Jack O'Connell have fantastic chemistry...you really feel their passion and growing love for one another.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Aug 10, 2023

Overall the film is a beautiful depiction of intimacy and pleasure that is one of the few films to treat sex with tenderness and grace.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Emma Corrin and Jack O’ Connell shine in Netflix ‘s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s steamy, stunning, though a little too male-centric adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 23, 2023

A drama along those lines can be trite ... or it may find something fresh and original to say. But if a filmmaker simply wants to do a “love story” about people from opposed social backgrounds, he or she has no real need of Lawrence’s novel.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2023

What it ultimately conjures up is, a pointless and vacant adaptation that is forgettable in its own modern mechanics.

Full Review | Jan 31, 2023

Erotically and artistically directed as a love story.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jan 26, 2023

Adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s controversial novel placing the emphasis on love leading to a new life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 30, 2022

Lady Chatterley’s Lover will surprise audiences with how much investment in its characters it is able to achieve. This is a slow burn of passion and storytelling that captures both the scandalous and heartwarming nature of its love story.

Full Review | Dec 24, 2022

This thoughtful film, scripted by Oscar-­nominee David Magee, touches on other themes explored in the novel, such as post-war trauma and the advance of industrialisation...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 23, 2022

While the screenplay doesn't do enough justice to the vigour and indignation of D H Lawrence's classic novel, the generous lead performances and the beautiful aesthetic definitely do

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 23, 2022

Told from Constance Reid’s point of view, the intense erotic awakening emerges forcefully thanks to Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell as Oliver.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2022

Except for the occasional explicit sex scene, it’s fairly typical Masterpiece Theatre-style fare, and then not an example of that genre’s highest quality.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Dec 19, 2022

It invests both of the principals with character and pathos, so much so that you will be rooting for these two crazy kids to get together and do the beast with two backs forever...

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

This may not be the best imaginable Lover—I’m not sure that film has yet been made—but it is more than good enough.

Full Review | Dec 13, 2022

The non-existent chemistry between the lovers reinforce the idea that this film is on automatic pilot.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 12, 2022

It’s a seductive, highly charged and intoxicating affair.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 10, 2022

O'Connell brings earthiness and subtlety, while the elegant Corrin undergoes a mesmerising emotional journey, casting off both inhibitions and clothing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 9, 2022

A sensual tingle rings through this effective period romance.

Screen Rant

Lady chatterley's lover review: leads sizzle in magnetic romance [middleburg].

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Directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre from a screenplay by David Magee, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is yet another adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, one that pushes the envelope in refreshing ways and finds a balance between the characters’ emotions, the issues of class, and nicely filmed sex scenes. The romance is elevated by Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell’s lovely chemistry, and their affair is made believable because the film is grounded. With so much to offer viewers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a strong, romantic, and enthralling adaptation that boasts wonderful performances, and an eroticism that has been missing from the romance genre lately.

Constance “Connie” Reid (Corrin) is newly married to Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett) and is excited about moving forward in her life with a man she loves. But, it’s not long before Clifford is off to fight in World War I, where he is injured and paralyzed from the waist down. Upon his return, the couple moves from London to the Wragby estate, where Connie, now Lady Chatterley, begins to feel trapped in her monotonous daily life. With Clifford no longer capable of having sex, he encourages Connie to choose someone of upper class status with whom she can produce an heir. Connie is put off by this suggestion, but, as she starts to take her daily walks, she meets and falls in love with Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell), the estate’s gamekeeper. Due to their class differences and other complications, however, the pair must keep their affair a secret or risk the consequences if it ever comes to light.

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Crucially, Lady Chatterley’s Lover takes the time to explore its characters. They never feel thinly written or underdeveloped. Lady Chatterley and Oliver have their individual reasons for keeping their affair a secret, which only deepens their characters and gives the film some proper and non-contrived conflict that slowly builds. The film not only explores the differences in class, but what it means for the characters to be happy. In Lady Chatterley’s case, she is trapped in a marriage that takes more than it gives, with Clifford Chatterley — though believing he loves in his own way — being too self-involved to give his wife the attention and tenderness she craves. Oliver is also stuck in a marriage with seemingly no way out, which bonds him to Lady Chatterley in ways only they can truly understand, providing their relationship with more layers than their attraction to each other.

That said, Lady Chatterley’s Lover doesn’t hold back on capitalizing on the sexual attraction between the pair. There are a good amount of sex scenes that are quite steamy, playful, and erotic. It’s a nice change considering how many romantic films are lacking in that department, as they’ve been fairly chaste and watered down to the point they don’t even include much longing. In Clermont-Tonnerre’s film, there is plenty of desire, palpable tension, and gentle vulnerability throughout. It helps immensely that Corrin and O’Connell have plenty of chemistry together, which greatly uplifts their scenes and makes audiences truly care about their romance. Corrin is assured in her role, balancing the wonder and down-to-earth traits of Lady Chatterley with her yearning and growing sense of self and confidence. O’Connell brings a sense of ruggedness to pair with Oliver’s warmth. Whether apart or together, the actors bring out the best in their characters and each other.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is very much about the titular character’s sexual awakening and, importantly, standing up for what she really wants out of her life instead of watching as the days pass her by with no happiness or change. Clifford cannot provide her with what she needs despite the fact that she still cares for him, and the film conveys that exceptionally well. All told, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the kind of romance movie that isn’t made very much anymore. It’s a thoughtful, desire-filled romance that has depth, exploring Connie and Oliver’s hearts and minds, as well as examining class and societal constraints. It’s a wonderful and engaging watch that will surely satisfy audiences.

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Lady Chatterley’s Lover played during the 2022 Middleburg Film Festival. The film releases in select theaters on November 23 and will be available to stream on Netflix December 2. It is 103 minutes long and is rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity and some language.

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Lady Chatterley’s Lover Review

Lady Chatterly’s Lover (2022)

D.H. Lawrence’s famed 1928 novel about an upper-class woman fulfilling her desires with a working-class groundskeeper is perhaps best known for being banned. It took until 1960 for the first uncensored version of the book to be published in the UK, owing to its lavish descriptions of sex and the use of certain unmentionable words. Film adaptations, of which there have been many, have had this to reckon with — how to faithfully translate the overwhelming desire and carnality between Constance Chatterley and her lover, Oliver Mellors, to the screen in a way that is worthy of such a groundbreaking work of 20th century fiction?

French filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre ( The Mustang)  steps up to the plate with remarkable poise and a keen eye for sensuality in her new version of  Lady Chatterley’s Lover  for Netflix. What begins as somewhat middling period drama fare is soon split open by stars Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell , enticing and controlled as Chatterley and Mellors respectively, whose chemistry floods the screen. Their pleasure with and for one another is depicted as something folkloric, almost bacchanalian, as they dance naked through blissful forests and meadows.

Its performances and often striking visuals help lift it away from being too staid a drama.

While this is beautiful, shot elegantly by DoP Benoît Delhomme, it does, at times, lack the hot-bloodedness needed for the story’s erotic heart. There is a coolness, an almost aching sickliness to certain images which works to reflect Chatterley’s loneliness and lost sense of self, but the ferocity of the sex scenes with Mellors isn’t quite strong enough to bring things back to fiery warmth.

The traditional structures of the genre — beautiful costumes, verdant locations, conventional plotting — are all in place in the film, which doesn’t attempt to venture too far outside of these confines. It’s not a radical work, but its performances and often striking visuals help lift it away from being too staid a drama.

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Movies | 03 11 2022