Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
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.
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)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
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...
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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Intelligent and tasteful, even while being sexually frank.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >Miami Herald Marta Barber
Its candid conversations about sexuality are what places Lawrence's protagonist in a class by herself.
Read Full Review >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 >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.
