Soft focus literary eroticism

jaibo

It must have seemed a high concept idea of genius to the producers, Golan and Globus of Cannon films: re-unite the director and star of the soft-porn worldwide hit Emmanuelle for a big screen version of the most famous erotic novel of them all, D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The film, for a British erotic flick of the time, has relatively high production values and a slew of classy but less well-known British character actors in the supporting roles. Director Jaekin makes his usual painstakingly beautiful but somewhat chocolate box soft focus images, and the whole film glides before the eye very pleasantly.

The first part of the film is pretty good as well. The upper class life of the Chatterleys is well delineated, there's some breathtaking tracking shots around the Chatterley mansion and the war sequence is convincing. The first sighting of by Lady Chatterley of Mellors naked and soaping himself by his hut is sexy and ripe. But once the affair begins and the two of them are making love on a regular basis, the film's pace slows down and its dramatic level evens to a flat-line. There's some intriguing cutting between the lovers in each others arms and the crippled Lord Chatterley languishing in his bed, but it's all a bit too tastefully done - Lawrence's earthy eroticism isn't captured, nor is the script wise to have lost his salty filthy dialogue. What you get is a sort of motion picture version of high-class erotic prints.

Some of Lawrence's diagnosis of the crippled state of the British aristocratic class after WW1 remains intact, and the film is helped by a very fine performance indeed by Shane Briant as the emasculated Lord. Kristel is never less than watchable as milady, and Nicolas Clay has the looks to suggest Mellors' virility, even though the director never lets him exercise it. The last quarter of the film seems rushed, and a promising sojourn to France only scratches the surface of what might have been a Sirk-like interlude of realisation that the protagonist's class and social circle offers nothing that a virile man can bring her.

Best filed under intriguing failures, artistically and (to Cannon Films' chagrin) at the box office.

score 6/10

jaibo 29 June 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1901375/