‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’: London Review

Dir: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. UK/US. 2022. 126 mins.

DH Lawrence’s much-adapted tale of passion, scandal and class gets another thorough seeing-to, courtesy of director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. This version, largely faithful to the novel – or as faithful as a film about infidelity can be – stars Emma Corrin (best known for playing Princess Diana in The Crown) as Lady Constance Chatterley, and Jack O’Connell as Oliver Mellors, the smouldering gamekeeper of the Chatterley family’s Derbyshire estate. It is, not unexpectedly, chock full of urgently breathless sex scenes, but slightly lacking in the sensuality which should make them ignite on the screen. That said, Constance’s needs, her loneliness, her grief for the loss of the marriage that she had hoped for, are all explored with a sensitivity and a depth which is not always afforded to this tricky character.

A satisfying literary adaptation, boasting two very successfully fleshed out performances from Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell

This is the second feature from actor-turned-director de Clermont-Tonnerre, whose debut was the Sundance NHK Award-winning drama The Mustang, starring Matthias Schoenaerts. It’s a satisfying literary adaptation, boasting two very successfully fleshed out performances from Corrin and O’Connell. That said, the picture suffers slightly from a few directorial decisions regarding the cinematography and use of colour. The reputation of the source material should ensure plenty of interest from Netflix subscribers once the film has completed its select festival run.

There’s a brief moment, snatched while Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett) is on leave from the Great War, when the marriage between this minor aristocrat and his new bride Constance looks as though it could work. The toffs at the wedding toast the possibility of a new heir, Clifford and Constance, still discovering each other, tentatively tiptoe around the idea of having children and find that both are in favour. But the opportunity is snatched from them, along with the much of the intimacy in their relationship, when Clifford returns from the war paralysed from the waist down. Constance finds that her role in the marriage has been unilaterally re-written, to be a nurse, permanently on call, and a typist and editor for Clifford’s woeful literary efforts (Corrin deploys a nice line in exasperated eye-rolls as she ploughs through his florid prose).

Corrin taps into the character’s fragility: Constance is so starved of love, of human connection, that she is overwhelmed by the physical proximity and the glancing contact of skin on skin between Mellors and herself. O’Connell is terrific, his flat vowels and laconic delivery belying something thrillingly turbulent and self-assured beneath. Constance’s attraction to him is wholly justified. But the way their sex scenes are filmed falls short of the erotic urgency one might expect, or hope for. There’s an odd blue tone to much of the grade which casts a chilly pall on scenes which should evoke torrid abandon rather than frigid cold. And then there’s the camerawork, an agitated patchwork of random bits of flesh which seems a little too scattershot to be as sexually charged as intended. The score is more successful – a dull, aching cello motif captures Constance’s sadness; then as love and fulfilment blossoms, the rest of the string section brings emotional layers and harmony to the picture.

The scandal of an extra-marital affair might have lost its piquancy now, but that’s not to say that the film has no contemporary resonance: the themes of class division which underpin the story are as relevant now as they were when the book was first published, in 1928.