LADY’S CHATTERLEY’S LOVER. (2022)

DIRECTED BY LAURE DE CLERMONT-TONNERRE.

STARRING EMMA CORRIN, JACK O’CONNELL, MATTHEW DUCKETT AND JOELY RICHARDSON.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Who doesn’t love a story like this, in which a rich toff lady gets with a nice hairy bit of rough, who’s got good garden soil under his fingernails and fire and a nice pork pie in his belly? LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER is one such story.

Emma Corrin plays the titular Lady C., or Constance ‘Connie’ Reid, the gorgeous young brunette who marries Baronet Clifford Chatterley, who in turn owns a huge bit of real estate in the countryside called-you guessed it- Chatterley.

Anyway, Connie and Clifford manage to consummate their marriage the night before Clifford goes off to fight World War One, and presumably write a shit-tonne of war poems as well, lol, as was the style of the time. When he returns, he’s an impotent as a Nevada Boxing Commissioner, a line used by Montgomery Burns in popular cartoon THE SIMPSONS.

He can’t now get Connie pregnant with an heir- or even a ‘spare,’ eh, Prince Haz?- so he suggests, rather open-mindedly of him, I think, that Connie should sleep with someone else in order to conceive. Enter the deliciously ‘reserved’ (a pun!) gamekeeper of Chatterley, Oliver Mellors, who lives in a darling little rustic hut on the estate.

The sex is hot and raunchy. Just think of long shapely legs in silk stockings wrapped round a trim male waist and firm buttocks. Think of a wail of desire and a woman’s fingers entwined in a man’s curly hair while her lips seek out his and their tongues lap together like waves on a seashore.

Think of his magnificent organ, sliding inwards and upwards in a sauce of feminine arousal, and of his proud, upstanding soldiers, each one ready, willing and able to hit the spot and do the honours on behalf of his battalion. Crikey, I’m confused now. Do I describe the female orgasm or hand out the Victoria Cross? Oh well. It’s much the same thing, you know…!

Oliver the gamekeeper has feelings, apparently. He’s angry at the thought of Constance’s using him to conceive a child, but it must be obvious to everyone at Chatterley that Connie doesn’t give a fig for her injured husband and is head-over-heels in love with the gamekeeper. Utterly besotted doesn’t even cover it.

After all, it’s Oliver she dances naked in the rain with, Oliver to whom she gravitates every minute of the day. And, when she realises she’s pregnant with Oliver’s child, it’s not Clifford (the Big Red Dog???) with whom she’s planning on settling down and playing House. But what’s Stuffed Shirt Clifford going to have to say about all this…? Constance is still his Awfully Wedded Wife, after all, isn’t she…?

Not a whole lot happens in this film except for gorgeous scenery and inter-class sex, is that what you’d call it? The housekeeper, Mrs. Bolton, is played by Joely Richardson who, of course, played Lady Chatterley in the 1993 BBC TV serial version, with Sean Bean as her lover.

Finally, there’s a lot of sex in the fillum as I may have mentioned, but it’s not a very sexy film at the same time. Not a lot of chemistry between the two leads, you see, and no scenes at all where the viewer would be positively transported with passion out of their own circumstances and into the lovers’. It’s a very ploddy, ‘meh’ sort of film.

Here’s a short wee sketch I wrote myself that might have livened the film up a bit.

Characters: Constance is the wife; Clifford the husband; and Oliver the lover.

Constance: Right, well, I’m off then, Clifford. I’m leaving you for Oliver, remember?

Clifford: Bugger. Was that today? I was sure it wasn’t until next week.

Constance: Clifford, you’re fucking hopeless, you know that?

Clifford: Well, at least I’m not the laughing stock of Chatterley like you, doing it with that gardener fellow every time my back is turned.

Constance: Clifford, your back is always turned, silly! It happened at the Battle of the Somme, don’t you remember? The doctors couldn’t turn you back around the right way again, remember?

Clifford: Thanks for reminding me, bitch. So, anyway, how do you and your gardener fellow propose to live without my millions?

Constance: We shall live deliciously, my gardener and I, feasting on fresh air and sunshine and poetry and art and Oliver’s massive knob.

Clifford, savagely disappointed: And to think I spent all that time trying to teach you that money is the only thing worth living for. I’m ashamed of you, Constance.

Constance: Oh, fuck off, Clifford, you old dullard. Here’s Oliver now, anyway. Now you’ll really see something. Oliver, honey, over here!

The couple start fucking, much to Clifford’s utter disgust. A crowd gathers round to praise Oliver’s exceptional swordsmanship.

Constance, moaning in mid-coitus: Lend us twenty quid, would you, Clifford? I’m a bit stoney, and you only pay Oliver once a year. It takes forever to come round.

Clifford: Give me one good reason why I should give you a brass farthing, woman?

Constance: Well, seriously, Clifford, old chap, you’re sucking Oliver’s cock right now. He’s not a bloody object, you know. A sex-thing on sale to the highest bidder. He’s very sensitive on the subject of being used for sex, as it goes.

Clifford: Ah balls. He reaches mournfully for his wallet and does the necessary.

Oliver grins broadly, carries on sucking and waves to the camera.

FATALE. (2020) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

FATALE. (2020) DIRECTED BY DEON TAYLOR. STARRING HILARY SWANK, MICHAEL EALY, MIKE COLTER, DANNY PINO AND DAMARIS LEWIS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is not the best ‘you’ve had sex with the wrong person and now your life is ruined’ stalker-type film you’ll probably ever see in your life, but I personally enjoyed it, and it was definitely worth watching at least one time.

There are at least four (go on, count ‘em!) distinct nods here to the original stalker film, the Daddy of them all, Adrian Lyne’s FATAL ATTRACTION from 1989, and the movie turns into Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 masterpiece STRANGERS ON A TRAIN near the end as well, with the whole ‘I did your murders, now you do mine!’ thing. Kriss Kross, as they say in THE SIMPSONS…

Derrick and Tracie Tyler are one of those beautiful, rich high-achieving power couples. He’s an agent to a whole stable of sporting celebrities, as well as being a former college basketball star, and she’s in real estate. They have one of those magnificent but soulless show-homes made of glass and steel, similar to the one in THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020). All mod cons but literally no heart…

They’re nice to look at, these show-gaffs, but personally I find all those empty, clutter-free acres of space deeply, deeply impersonal and boring. Where’s the character? Where’s the personality? Where’s the mountain of old TV guides and calendars from 1982, lol…? I can’t be doing with that kind of spotlessness; it’s too high maintenance. Besides, my kids would make shite of all those pristine, jam-and-chocolate-free surfaces.

Anyway, Derrick and Tracie’s marriage is on the rocks, and Derrick confides to his business partner, the burly Rafe, that he thinks Tracie might be cheating on him. He doesn’t seem to see any irony in the fact that, when he goes to Vegas for a mate’s bachelor party, he meets Hilary Swank’s character, Val, and has energetic stranger-sex with her in her hotel room.

The erotica here is not terribly erotic, just so you know. There’s no nudity, not even a nip-slip or a butt-shot, and no discernible sexual chemistry or electricity of any kind between the two leads. It’s extremely disappointing.

The sex in FATAL ATTRACTION is messy but believable, and the sexual tension between Michael Douglas and Glenn Close is both palpable and sizzling like a pan-full of fat Irish sausages. And, let me tell you, that’s fairly feckin’ sizzling…!

Back goes Derrick to his wife, anyway, after all the illicit sex-with-a-stranger. No doubt he feels suitably guilty for having been a cheating louse, as he seems like a half-decent bloke. No sooner is he back home, though, than the Tylers are broken into, by a burglar in a balaclava who doesn’t steal anything but roughs Derrick up a fair bit before legging it. Who’s got it in for Droopy Derrick, then?

Enter the detective, the mopey Val Quinlan. Sound familiar? Yep, that’s because she’s the Val with whom Derrick has had all the illicit nookie in Vegas. But what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Wrong, very, very wrong. This Val chick has an agenda, and, now that she has a hold over Derrick (all the sex, remember?), she intends to use him to further that agenda. Derrick is in for a world of pain…

With the STRANGERS ON A TRAIN-style twist, this is FATAL ATTRACTION with a slight difference. It’s a very grey-looking film, with not much colour in it. It’s all that washed-out glass and steel and chrome. Even Hilary Swank herself looks long and grey and washed-out in it, but she seems like a good enough actress and the plot is fairly decent too, so, overall, I give FATALE a thumbs-up. Enjoy it.  

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thirteen-Stops-Later-Book-ebook/dp/B091J75WNB/
  

WRITING ‘THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET,’ FORMERLY KNOWN AS ‘THE DEVIANTS,’ BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

WRITING ‘THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET,’ FORMERLY KNOWN AS ‘THE DEVIANTS.’

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I started writing this book in the autumn of 2013 and finished it in March of 2014. Back then, it was known as THE DEVIANTS. It was my first full-length novel and I wrote it intending it for publication.

Prior to writing it, I had been penning poems on the subject of bad sex and failed relationships and performing them live in Dublin pubs and other spoken word venues. (Okay, so it was mostly pubs.) I was attending a writer’s group at the time (sporadically, due to childcare issues) and writing stories and poems there too.

I’d also been writing little comic ‘Letter to the Editor’ type pieces under various false names for the METRO, at the time Dublin’s biggest free daily newspaper. Loads of extremely friendly young Brazilian men and women would stand on street corners in the morning and hand you your free copy with a beaming smile as you hurried past to work, school or college.

The METRO, which started life as the METRO-HERALD, is sadly defunct now, which is probably just as well. In the current atmosphere of coronavirus mistrust, the powers-that-be would probably have found some reason why someone’s distributing a free newspaper on the streets at rush hour was bad for public health.

Anyway, as enjoyable and bohemian as my writing life was at the time, I began to experience a really strong urge to write something bigger and more lasting. My own feelings of mortality probably had a lot to do with my writing the book at that particular time. I wasn’t getting any younger and I wanted to leave something of mine for future generations to enjoy, or revile, as they chose, before it was too late.

Every writer who’s ever lived probably knows that feeling, the feeling of running out of time and wanting to get so much down on paper before you pop your clogs. Does any writer ever feel that he or she has written ‘enough?’ I doubt it. There’s no such thing as ‘enough’ to a writer.

Probably even Stephen King, the most productive writer who ever lived, is occasionally plagued by feelings of ‘I should be doing more; I should be WRITING more!!!’ Maybe even he too feels the pain of a wasted day, a day spent pricking about on the phone or on social media or watching DVDs when you should be frantically committing words to paper or your laptop.

Oh God, the pain of those awful days! How many times have I guilted myself, reproached myself or mentally beaten myself up for not writing! For being too tired, too emotional, too frazzled after a long day, too lazy or just too disinclined to sit down and write. Some days, after working my ass off, I take a genuinely well-deserved break. All work and no play, after all. But the days I allow myself to just fritter away, well, I always regret those, and rightly so.

I started specifically writing THE DEVIANTS after a trip to the Dublin Writers’ Museum on Parnell Square in late 2013. After seeing all those fabulous old original copies of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA from the actual nineteenth century in their locked display cases, I became determined to leave something of my own behind me when it’s my time to go. My work mightn’t ever make it into the museum, but at the very least I might feature on someone’s Kindle or bookshelf. I went home and started writing. Properly, this time. This time, I was in it for the long haul.

So I wrote the story that had been inside me for so long, waiting to come out; the story of a lonely young woman, Juliet, who meets a lonely married man called Max and starts an ultimately destructive affair with him, an affair that breaks his marriage wide open and leaves Juliet a hollow shell of the person she once was.

Max lives in a big comfortable house in the suburbs with his talented artist wife, his two beautiful daughters and their dog Bruce, but Juliet has a ‘grotty flat’ in an area near or off Parnell Street, just a stone’s throw from the Irish Writers’ Museum.

In the book, Juliet works in a bakery-slash-coffee shop on Parnell Street and she often sits in the fabulous Garden of Remembrance when the weather permits to eat her lunch, or to just sit and daydream about Max, something she does a lot of.

I’ve often sat in there too and felt completely over-awed by the hugely magnificent statue of the Children of Lir or trailed my fingers in the cool blue waters of the pond. (This was back in the days when we were still allowed to touch stuff…)

That whole area up by the Garden and the Museum also houses the Irish Writers’ Centre and the Hugh Lane Art Gallery, and it just speaks to me so clearly of Max and Juliet every time I go there, or to Chapters’ Bookstore on Parnell Street. (I have Max and Juliet meeting in a bookstore on Parnell Street, only I’ve called it Quills.)

Believe it or not, I’d written their story as an actual short story first. It was published in Ireland’s BIG ISSUES magazine and I was so inspired by it (inspired by my own work, lol, what am I like?!) that I decided to make their amour fou, their ‘crazy love,’ the subject of my first full-length novel. I still feel inclined to regard it as the best thing I ever wrote and I still feel that big things, good big things, will happen for it one day.

I just remembered that I actually fell out with a good friend for about two years over THE DEVIANTS. I was serialising it on my blog, a chapter a week, and this friend read it and said it had too much sex in it. She said that, if I took all the sex out, I might be able to interest publishers in it. Anyone who’s read the book will know that the sex is a genuinely integral part of it.

I was so hurt by her remarks about my book-baby that we fell out, or at least I stopped talking to her for about two years, after which we sort of drifted back in to talking to each other again, mainly because I felt very guilty about what I’d done in cutting off relations with her.

That lady is sadly deceased now, and if I had my time again, I would try to handle her criticisms differently. More maturely, maybe. I certainly wouldn’t stop speaking to her again for two years over a book, even if it was my first attempt at sending one out into the world…!

Anyway, I discovered the wonderful world of Kindle Direct Publishing in the winter of 2014 and submitted THE DEVIANTS straightaway. The best review it received likened it to Nabokov’s LOLITA and the worst one advised me to stop writing, immediately and forever, after inflicting such a rubbishy FIFTY SHADES OF GREY knock-off on the world. Heh-heh-heh.

Needless to say, I ignored this advice and, seven years later, am still writing away like a mad yoke, still trying to leave a completed legacy of writings (if a writer’s legacy can ever be said to be ‘completed’) for my readers in the future.

I have two writing tips to share with you before I go: 1. Start writing, and 2. Keep writing, no matter what. I hope that Max and Juliet will outlive me, and that people are reading about them and identifying with them long after I’ve shuffled off my mortal coil and gone to join the angels above. Or the devils below, it’s all good…!

THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET is FREE, FREE, FREE from the 15^th to the 19^th (inclusive) of September. Please download your FREE COPY here!

THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET: FREE, FREE, FREE UNTIL SATURDAY 19TH!!!

Max, a bored and unhappy middle-aged man, meets a younger woman, Juliet, by chance in a bookshop. Instantly attracted to each other, they begin an affair. Juliet quickly realises that Max is not like most other men sexually. Lonely, and craving the affection she has been denied throughout her life, she allows herself to become Max’s sexual plaything- and punchbag- in exchange for his love. Max takes full advantage of Juliet’s friendless state and coerces her into doing things that leave her feeling degraded and violated. Afraid of losing Max, Juliet is unable to say no to his demands, and so the game continues until the situation blows up in their faces, and both Max and Juliet have no choice but to confront the consequences of their messed-up love.