I suppose I should begin by stating that I've never read the novel nor seen any of the previous adaptations; a girl I know in Paris has been recommending it since it was released long before it picked up Cesars for Best Actress, Film and Writing this year. Though I haven't read or seen it previously I knew, or thought I did, the main thrust - sorry about that - i.e. rough sex between a macho ill-educated man and a sexually frustrated aristocrat saddled with an impotent husband> How wrong can you be; what we get here is a romantic and, dare I say it, Tender love story which may account why the audience with whom I saw it comprised twelve assorted and unaccompanied females between 20 and 60 and one couple. If you asked me to nominate an actress alive or dead who can do both aristocrat and sensual I'd think in terms of Ava Gardener, Sophia Loren, Fanny Ardant, Ingrid Bergman, etc and not, say, Audrey Hepburn, but I'd be wrong because Marina Hands is outstanding in the eponymous role and looks younger than her thirty years. Of course she IS the daughter of Ludmila Mikael which explains a lot; the female director has followed convention inasmuch as the first time Constance sees her lover to be she is wearing a skirt that stops just short of her ankles, a coat, scarf, gloves and a hat in other words the only naked flesh on display is her face and true to form her first reaction to a man naked from the waist up, is to recoil in embarrassment though she soon gets over it. With two hours forty minutes to play with the director takes her time getting to the nitty gritty so that it's just short of the hour when they first make love. There's lots of detail, atmosphere as we get to know Constance who comes across as virginal and we suspect that if the marriage WAS consummated before her husband received the wound that rendered him impotent it was not very satisfactory. Another surprise is the gamekeeper - now given a name other than the Mellors of the novel, who, far from being a crude, macho love em and leave em macho type is actually sensitive and comes to love Constance. There IS sex, of course, but strange as it may seem it is almost chaste and would almost, but not quite, be at home in a Doris Day movie from the fifties. As I write Marina Hands has accepted an invitation to join the elite Comedy Francaise, an honour she fully deserves.
Review of Lady Chatterley
