This Latest Lady's No Tramp

Sun Herald

Sunday September 9, 2007

Rob Lowing

LADY CHATTERLEY

Rated: M

Starring: Marina Hands, Jean-Louis Coulloc'h, Hippolyte Girardot.

Critic's warning: Full-frontal nudity, sex scenes.

Critic's rating: 7/10

THE 170-minute length will drive many viewers crazy; others will find the French language subtitling a slog in Lady Chatterley.

But remaining adults will discover plenty to admire in this delicate Gallic version of D.H. Lawrence's famous forbidden romance, usually known as Lady Chatterley's Lover.

For arguably the first time, Lawrence's study of intimacy has been rescued from the C-grade sex-obsessed cinema shenanigans epitomised by the trite 1981 version with Sylvia Kristel.

Instead, director Pascale Ferran uses Lawrence's second version of his story in her steady, made-for-television drama. This further relegates peripheral characters (the paralysed husband, the nurse) to focus on the principal players.

Lady Constance Chatterley (sweetly engaging Hands) is a shy, gentle young wife who, in the years after World War I, leads a stultifying existence with her polite but distant and disabled husband (Girardot).

Constance is happiest when she is outdoors and, after an illness, decides to use a hut on her husband's estate to rest during daily walks.

The hut is also used by the estate's gamekeeper, the equally shy Parkin (Marlon Brando-ish Coullo'ch). He maintains his distance until, pragmatically, he comes to believe Constance desires a working-class lover. "These things happen," he shrugs. For Constance the affair is a revelation. But, as she is so inexperienced, she has no idea how Parkin feels.

Viewers should not expect the soap opera fireworks they have seen in other versions. Don't lose concentration at the end: the film stops abruptly and the whole point of the story is contained in the final moments and the characters' expressions.

It's a shame the print reviewed here (seemingly digitally projected) was fuzzy around the edges, with muted colours. The rural settings are gorgeous; this minimally verbal story of the gradual shedding of inhibitions (and clothes) is as much a homage to nature.

© 2007 Sun Herald

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