Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
39 Adventures of Power
66 Afterschool
73 Amreeka
49 Antichrist
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
71 Big Fan
65 Black Dynamite
76 Bliss
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
76 Broken Embraces
70 Bronson
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
60 Collapse
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
53 Dare
50 Defamation
67 Departures
70 Earth Days
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
88 Fantastic Mr. Fox
31 Fix
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
xx From Mexico with Love
28 Gentlemen Broncos
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Horse Boy, The
74 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
26 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
43 Little Traitor, The
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
46 Love Hurts
84 Maid, The
45 Mammoth
75 Messenger, The
55 Missing Person, The
59 More Than a Game
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
48 New York, I Love You
66 No Impact Man
26 Oh My God
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
79 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73 Red Cliff
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
65 Skin
41 Splinterheads
42 Staten Island
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
58 Storm
82 Sun, The
49 Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73 That Evening Sun
61 Trucker
49 Turning Green
83 U2 3D
45 Uncertainty
67 Visual Acoustics
32 War on Kids
67 Way We Get By, The
65 Wedding Song, The
xx White on Rice
59 William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74 Woman in Berlin, A
43 Women in Trouble
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Lady Chatterley

EMAILPRINTKino International Corp.

Lady Chatterley reviews
80
7.0 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 26 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Foreign

Written by: Roger Bohbot
Pascale Ferran
D.H. Lawrence (novel)
Pierre Trividic (dialogue)

Directed by: Pascale Ferran

Release Date:
Theatrical: June 22, 2007
DVD: December 4, 2007

Running Time: 168 minutes, Color

Origin: Belgium / France / UK

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Marina Hands, Jean-Louis Coullo'ch, Hippolyte Girardot, Hélène Alexandridis, Hélène Fillières, Bernard Verley, Sava Lolov, and Jean-Baptiste Montagut

Based on D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover," this film tells the story of a passion that is both innocent and subversive - one that transcends, without ever ignoring, class and social conventions. (Kino International)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

There's an adult life force in every frame of this luxuriously paced work, even in the sight of rain and a lady's stocking.

Read Full Review >
100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A masterful 168-minute piece of storytelling that never ceases to be gripping in spite of its measured pace.

Read Full Review >
90

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The most frankly sensual movie in memory. Winner of five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its luminous star, Marina Hands, it has found the soul of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel.

Read Full Review >
90

The New York Times A.O. Scott

This Lady Chatterley, winner of five César awards in France, feels bracingly fresh, vital and modern.

Read Full Review >
90

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The supreme achievement of this lovely film — all three rhythmic, leisurely hours of it -- is that what borders on faintly fascistic body worship in the novel instead feels as perfectly natural to us as it does to the lovers. Lawrence would kvell.

Read Full Review >
88

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's a movie as timely as it is thrilling to watch.

Read Full Review >
88

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley is sensual in escalating degrees of heat, but the film's eroticism, which is substantial, is laid on with a caress. The movie's a slow-motion swoon back into Eden -- a nature documentary about humans -- and it's hypnotic.

Read Full Review >
88

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A heartbreaking story of true love.

Read Full Review >
88

Chicago Tribune Sid Smith

The result is not a movie of peekaboo titillation, but a studied, original portrait of sexuality and its role in human relationships.

Read Full Review >
88

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Intelligent and tasteful, even while being sexually frank.

Read Full Review >
83

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

These are mortal souls and unglamorous bodies and Ferran explores their affair in its earthy, physical and fleshy reality.

Read Full Review >
80

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Director Pascale Ferran makes this a sort of opera of two bodies, as the characters discover not only each other but themselves. And the French filmmaker cannily turns their corporeal discoveries into a moral mission, two desperately lonely souls crying for spiritual freedom in a world of moral constriction.

Read Full Review >
80

Empire David Parkinson

Pascale Ferran as the first female director to adapt this notorious novel absorbs her successful vision with a uniquely romantic vibe.

Read Full Review >
80

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

In this film the lovers are seeking the impossible through the possible. The knowledge of that impossibility makes the scenes all the more powerful. This is the core of Lawrence's novel, and Ferran has understood it.

Read Full Review >
80

Village Voice J. Hoberman

This is not so much a love story (and even less a story about love) than it is a movie of passionate loveliness.

Read Full Review >
80

New York Magazine David Edelstein

I found the first half-hour a snooze, but once I adjusted to the movie's rhythms, I was completely enraptured. Ferran weaves the love affair into nature, but not in the mystical, sanctified manner of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain."

Read Full Review >
75

TV Guide Ken Fox

Wragby is a stately manor straight out of English House & Garden, rather than a sprawling, suffocating warren teetering on the edge of a coal pit, and sex is portrayed as a means of personal deliverance rather than a universal salvation, leaving Lawrence's admirers still waiting for the film that will finally do the novel justice.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It captures the animal attraction we call lust and carefully tracks its evolution to true love. For all its faults, this beautifully shot, sexually graphic film is a gem.

Read Full Review >
75

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

As the title character in Lady Chatterley, Marina Hands does the most persuasive job of feigning sexual pleasure since Jane Fonda in "Coming Home."

Read Full Review >
75

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Being a fairly faithful adaptation, this version also has a lot of that other stuff about the hypocrisy of civilized life, the truthfulness of natural splendor and so forth.

Read Full Review >
75

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Few films even try to render the full range of emotions and sensations in female sexuality as the aptly titled Lady Chatterley, directed and co-written by a Frenchwoman, Pascale Ferran.

Read Full Review >
70

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

If a film can be both lush and cold, both erotic and cautious, that film is Lady Chatterley. It's a picture to honor and appreciate, not necessarily to love.

Read Full Review >
67

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Lady Chatterley is the recipient of six César Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscar. Although the film is capable of sustaining our interest throughout, the viewer may find it lacking in some of the transcendence Lady Chatterley's lust is supposed to inspire.

Read Full Review >
63

Miami Herald Marta Barber

Its candid conversations about sexuality are what places Lawrence's protagonist in a class by herself.

Read Full Review >
50

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

This might be pleasant to watch, in a floaty '70s-movie kind of way, if not for the film's groaning 168-minute length and abrupt thudder of an ending.

Read Full Review >
50

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Watching this film I reflected that there are only so many Cracker Jacks you can eat before you decide to hell with the toy.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 26 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

kevin b. gave it a10:
I've given a 10 as a default as - boo - I haven't actually watched the movie yet - it's on release in the UK on 24 August. I may downrate the film after the screening but am willing to suspend disbelief for the mo': I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Moving onto the ad hominem arguments in this thread, why can't contributors accept that their subjective judgements are, of course, legitimate but also carry little weight with others who have differing opinions? There's too much 'I just think', 'overrated', 'elitist', 'imbecilic' etc. And who do I think I am , yadayadaya. Enjoy! And if you didn't, chacun a son gout. (Elitist!)

Michael gave it a5:
Andy Scala, there is only one s in asinine. Your typographical errors subvert the inherent elitism of your argument. I suggest you return to glorifying shallow postmodern art in the humanities departments or some other intellectual cul-de-sac produced by the Ivy League, while dismissing all other culture as inconsequential kitsch.

Liz gave it a2:
Pretty nature scenes and a few good scenes (eg, Lady Chatterly's husband insisting that no one help him up the hill even though his motorized wheelchair os failing him) but about an hour too long. The sex scenes are painful to watch. After their third encounter, Lady Chatterly's lover says, "We came at the same time." ???? I hadn't notice that she got much pleasure out of the first two. And why should she have? He had all the technique of a 16 year old boy and it took about 30 seconds. In contract the end of the movie is a conversation between Lady Chatterly and her lover. It takes place in real time and it was agonizing to watch and listen to.

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
A great surprise. A patience and beautiful film - but with that said - it is not quite the film that it could have been.

Jay D gave it a7:
The problem with Alexandra's comments is not that she didn't like it, that is her prerogative, but that she felt she should warn other people not to see it. Make your comments about the film and appreciate that others are intelligent enough to make up their own mind as to whether to go to see it or not.

Alexandra gave it a0:
To Jerry J and Ken G Thank you both for backing me up. I'm tired of condescending and pretentious people that think that anyone that doesn't agree with them is wrong. Just because I did not like this film does not make me an idiot, in fact, I am far from it. I just thought this movie was dull. Simple as that.

Ken G gave it a4:
To Andy Scala, you are not an idiot if you dislike a certain movie. An idiot is someone who looks down on someone else who doesn't agree with him/her about a movie. An idiot is someone who has no respect for a difference of opinion about a movie. That makes you the idiot. As for this movie, as beautifully filmed as it was, the story is flat, lifeless, and feels tame and dated by today's standards. Of all the great novels, this story is probably not one of the better choices to make a movie about today. The story was daring and scandalous in it's day. But no longer. Take those elements out of it, and what you have left is a rather tame, bland story, that takes too much time to tell a story with so little going on. It seems the mindset of the filmmakers here was that we have to pay proper homage to this legendary story, by making a movie that is almost 3 hours long. The problem is, that there is not 3 hours worth of material in this story. The whole thing is stretched so thin, that even the sex and nudity starts to feel dull.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use