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Lady Chatterley
Kino International Corp.


7.0

based on 26 reviews
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based on 26 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA 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)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Roger Bohbot Pascale Ferran D.H. Lawrence (novel) Pierre Trividic (dialogue)
DIRECTED BY:	Pascale Ferran
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: December 4, 2007 Theatrical: June 22, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	168 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Belgium / France / UK
LANGUAGE(S):	French (with English subtitles)

Best Actress (Hands), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film and Best Writing - Adaptation, 2007 César Awards

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.

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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

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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

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

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A heartbreaking story of true love.

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.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Intelligent and tasteful, even while being sexually frank.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

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

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.

Empire David Parkinson

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

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

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.

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.

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.

Lady Chatterley Kino International Corp.

Lady Chatterley
Kino International Corp.