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.
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