Erotic Movies: Lady Chatterley’s Lover

The latest film version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover is rather boring and tiresomely long.

 

 

 

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Summer with Monika

The great Ingmar Bergman made the movie Summer with Monika in 1953 (Sommaren med Monika). It presented a simple and realistic love story: a calm young man Harry Lund gets the hots for a feisty teenager portrayed by Harriet Andersson. The film is full of scenes that celebrate spontaneity. It was shortened to 62 minutes in the USA, so that the viewers wouldn't be bored. 62 minutes was enough. But in the movie at hand, in Lady Chatterley, much too much happens. The movie lasts for two hours and a half, but could be easily shortened to half an hour.

Naked in the mud

In fact, the whole movie is full of filler, with the exception of a lovely and relaxing sequence where the protagonists run naked in the rain and make love in the mud. Everything else seems long-winded and slow - if you put this movie in a race with a snail, it would come second. Here, even the butterflies are flying as if they were stoned. The scenes involving sex are also sleepy: they don't remind one of sex, but of a postcard sent from the hills.

Last Tango in Paris

Beware, the male protagonist’s just a shadow of Marlon Brando from Last Tango in Paris, and he isn’t even attractive. He's nothing special. His is the role of a forester named Parkin. The girl is Constance, lady Chatterley, a reserved woman who needs some adrenaline, which her crippled husband can’t provide, so she uses his employee Parkin. Their lovemaking is for primary school pupils - they have sexual intercourse as if they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve never heard of the Kama Sutra.

Boring sex

The viewers are yawning, biting their fingernails and thinking about the fast forward button when the lovers are doing it. Sexual intercourse is presented as esoteric - as pure poetry. The girl is supposed to cheat because of the adrenaline, but her lover is even sleepier than her crippled husband.

Because they’re trying to appear spontaneous at every step, they look like actors already in the beginning. The actors seem embarrassed to take their clothes off in front of the camera, so when they finally do it, they look like Lars Von Trier’s The Idiots. This latest screen version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover can be expected to excite only the pensioners and even then only those who can’t see anything and who have forgotten their glasses.

Other screen versions

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a widely popular and once controversial novel, written by D. H. Lawrence at the beginning of the 20th century, has been made into a movie for at least ten times. The hottest version is from 1981. It was directed by Just Jaeckin, who is best known for the cult movie Emmanuelle, while the main character was played by the unforgettable Sylvia Kristel.

A version from 1977, entitled Young Lady Chatterley, is also interesting. The plot is centered on Lady Chatterley's niece, who finds her aunt's journals and consequently starts to seek the same kind of carnal pleasure. There was also a very hot sequel, produced in 1985, where the heroine once again makes passionate love with her gardener. The Japanese version from 1979 is worth mentioning as well, just as the French original from the mid 1950s, where the delightful Danielle Darrieux appeared in the role of the protagonist.

 

Read more about sex and sexuality in our Lover's Guide.

 

 

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