El Amante De Lady Chatterley Film
James Talbot
La moglie di un inglese storpio ed impotente ha una relazione con un bel guardiacaccia e ne rimane incinta.Il marito viene a saperlo e, quando lei pretende che all'amante venga riconosciuta la paternit del bambino, la caccia di casa.
Il film fu distribuito per la prima volta in Francia, paese in cui stato girato, il 7 dicembre 1955; nello stesso anno ma nel giorno di Natale fu distribuito anche in Giappone. L'anno successivo tocc poi alle nordiche Finlandia (30 marzo 1956) e Svezia (30 aprile 1956), sbarcando quindi per la prima volta anche oltreoceano negli USA (16 novembre 1956 a Washington). Il 10 luglio 1959 fu pubblicato anche a New York; con date non note fu inoltre distribuito in altri paesi come Italia, Grecia, Belgio e Germania.
To say it another way, Lady Chatterley's Lover is not just a sexy love story. Yes, there is steamy infidelity but the real point (which was lost in the ensuing decades-long scandal surrounding the book) is integrating body and mind as a way of reconnecting to our purest impulses, and in so doing, maybe healing the whole world. Lawrence wore his Thomas-Hardy-Walt-Whitman influences on his sleeve. Of course, at the end of the day, the reason the book scandalized generations was because of all that throbbing pulsing sex, all those rising organs and enigmatic fluids, the Edenic orgasms, plus a couple of f-bombs (used as verbs, not adjectives, a crucial distinction).
Lawrence's book has been adapted for screens big and small many times, to varying degrees of success. The plot is well known and isn't all that original (a rich woman hooks up with her manly gardener), and there are landmines everywhere in the material. If an adaptation just focuses on the hot sex, then you're missing what Lawrence was getting at the "cataclysm" of war, the dangers of industrialization, the growing class conflict, and the myriad ways humanity has suffered spiritually from prioritizing mind over body. This new adaptation, directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, avoids the landmines remarkably well. The film shimmers and breathes, leaving space for discovery.
Connie Reid (Emma Corrin) has a couple of love affairs under her belt when she marries Baronet Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett), right before he heads off to fight in the Great War. Connie was raised in a modest slightly bohemian family, so becoming "Lady Chatterley" is a huge change. She is removed from London, from her sister Hilda (Faye Marsay), to live in the massive Chatterley estate. When Clifford returns home from the war, he is paralyzed from the waist down and needs full-time care. Connie loves him and does her best. However, she's a young woman with an impotent husband who shows no interest in getting creative about sexual pleasure. He wants an heir though, so he suggests she take on a lover, not for pleasure, of course, but for impregnation. Connie is devastated. She's aching for affection and touch. Then she gets a glimpse of Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper (Jack O'Connell). And with barely half a dozen words spoken between them, they hook up. He is not the aggressor or initiator. She is. He is more conscious of the class difference than she is. He calls her "m'lady" in a tone of deep respect and has a hard time dropping it after they've been intimate. Class awareness is engrained in him.
Before you know it, the love affair has heated up to such an extent that Connie's hours-long "walks" might arouse suspicion. Clifford spends most of his time with business associates, discussing the protests erupting in the mines in their district. (An echo of Lawrence's concerns about the damaging effects of the Industrial Revolution is present.) Clifford might not notice that something is going on with his wife, but Clifford's nurse-maid Mrs. Bolton (Joely Richardson) certainly does. Her alert glances at Connie's disheveled hair and glowing cheeks spark the film with dread about what will happen when this love affair is revealed, because of course it must be revealed.
With a screenplay by David Magee ("Finding Neverland," "Life of Pi"), "Lady Chatterley's Lover" takes its time with all this. The lovers may have sex almost immediately, but after that, they're on a path of discovery. Sex isn't just sex, and this is one of the main accomplishments of Clermont-Tonnerre's sensitive and even delicate approach, as well as the openness of Corrin and O'Connell. We live in a moment where grownup sex has practically vanished from the silver screen. There was a big Twitter "discussion" once about sex scenes, and several people agreed that sex scenes were only okay "if they advance the plot." That should come as a surprise to "Don't Look Now." Human beings don't have sex to advance the plot. Sex is a big part of many people's lives. In "Lady Chatterley's Lover," the sex is not generic. It is specific to these two people, and the specificity makes it erotic. You don't realize how rare something like this is until you see it done well.
Both Corrin and O'Connell are marvelous here. Connie and Oliver have been struggling underwater all their lives, and they didn't even realize it until they met. Now that they've met, they can finally breathe. The way Corrin and O'Connell slowly open up to each other, you can see the relationship deepening under their feet with every moment. This requires such openness and accessibility on the actors' parts. Something like "Lady Chatterley's" Lover requires the audience to be on the lovers' side, even if what the lovers are doing is wrong. If it's a doomed love, like Ilsa's and Rick's in "Casablanca," you have to "buy in" to their connection, and weep when it cannot be. In "Lady Chatterley's Lover," ugly gossip starts to spread, and it's painful to think of Connie and Oliver's Eden being spoiled. This is due almost entirely to Corrin and O'Connell's breathtaking open work with one another.
"Lady Chatterley's Lover" is Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre's second feature. Her first film was in 2019's "Mustang," starring Matthias Schoenaerts as a prison inmate participating in a rehabilitation program involving the taming of wild mustangs. "Mustang" was one of the hidden gems of 2019, with Schoenaerts giving a great performance as a violent man filled with shame about his violent past. "Mustang" has the same tactile quality as "Lady Chatterley's Lover," and the same happening-in-real-time energy. You feel you are running alongside the characters, trying to catch up with them on their journeys forward. "Mustang" was a much smaller movie than "Lady Chatterley's Lover," although it had some very complicated elements, like all those wild mustangs. Clermont-Tonnerre handles the far more ambitious "Lady Chatterley's Lover" with confidence and alive-ness, and if the film slackens a little bit when the gossipy walls-closing-in scenes begin, it doesn't take away from the main event: Corrin and O'Connell, lying on the grass in the forest, their bodies pale against the thick green, breathing as one. It's sneakily profound.
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take ittragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, westart to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. Itis rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future:but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live,no matter how many skies have fallen.
She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for amonth on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back toFlanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later,more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-threeyears old, and he was twenty-nine.
His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bitsseemed to grow together again. For two years he remained in thedoctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return tolife again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down,paralysed for ever.
This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to hishome, Wragby Hall, the family 'seat'. His father had died, Cliffordwas now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley.They came to start housekeeping and married life in the ratherforlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income.Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there wereno near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippledfor ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford camehome to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive whilehe could.
He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in awheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motorattachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden andinto the fine melancholy park, of which he was really so proud,though he pretended to be flippant about it.
Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to someextent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful,almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-lookingface, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulderswere broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He wasexpensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street.Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancyof a cripple.
He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained waswonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxiousbrightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, ofbeing alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside himhad perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank ofinsentience.
Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with softbrown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusualenergy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, andseemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so atall. Her father was the once well-known R. A., old Sir MalcolmReid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in thepalmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and culturedsocialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might becalled an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had beentaken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and theyhad been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague andBerlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke inevery civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.
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