Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Gamekeeper Gets Lucky

Originally posted April 24, 2007.
Parkin the gamekeeper (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) and Lady Chatterley (Marina Hands) run naked in the rain.

Lady Chatterley
Directed by Pascale Ferran
Written by Pascale Ferran and Roger Bohbot
Starring: Marina Hands, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, Hippolyte Girardot, Hélène Alexandridis, and Hélène Fillières
From France/Belgium

By Robert Rosen


Set in England in the aftermath of World War I, Lady Chatterley, an enhanced retelling of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover—originally published in 1928 and banned in America until 1960 due to its allegedly pornographic qualities—is a deeply subversive film. But this subversion has more to do with the film’s explicit antiwar message than it does with its explicit eroticism, which includes full-frontal female and male nudity, as well as a lingering shot of a semi-erect penis that will guarantee an NC-17 rating and very limited theatrical distribution in the United States.

The antiwar message is graphically spelled out in the film’s opening minutes. Sir Clifford Chatterley (Hippolyte Girardot), a crippled veteran (and super-wealthy owner of a coal mine), and his friends are sitting around the drawing room of his country estate after a dinner party, matter-of-factly discussing their gruesome battlefield experiences. One of the men tells how, as he was charging into a fusillade of cannon fire, he felt what he thought was warm water splashing on the back of his neck. Then he turned around to see that it was blood spurting from a comrade who’d just had his head blown off yet continued running “surprisingly far, like a chicken.” Sir Clifford, who despite his own war wound seems glad to be alive, and manages to keep a stiff upper lip (so to speak), does not yet know the profound effect that his injury will have on his young and beautiful wife, Lady Constance Chatterley (Marina Hands), who’s in the next room, eavesdropping on the conversation.

This scene not only serves as a poignant reminder that once upon a time the upper classes fought in wars, too. But even those who don’t already know where the plot is headed will soon get another message: If you go to war, get your fool ass shot off, and end up impotent and in a wheelchair (even a gasoline-powered one), you can presume that some uncouth ruffian will soon be banging your wife silly, and probably impregnating her with his child, which, if you’re a decent chap, you’ll have no choice but to accept as your own. What a demoralizing message to send to the troops! But what else would you expect from the French?

How about a vaguely Brando-like (from certain angles) ruffian, the gamekeeper, Oliver Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h)? But his affair with Lady Chatterley is not only about sex; it’s about sexual politics, and it raises the question: Can a man from the working class—poor but proud and self-sufficient—have a relationship built on love and mutual respect with an aristocratic woman who in addition to much primo real estate, has an allowance, as Lady Chatterley tells him to his amazement, of, “I don’t know, £500, £1000 per year”?

Perhaps he can—if they really care about each other and the sex is hot enough. And the sex is hot, indeed, starting with some rough and hurried animal-like couplings on the floor of Parkin’s rude hut, with both of them mostly clothed, and progressing over time to slow, sensual, multi-orgasmic, completely nude lovemaking with lots of foreplay and in a variety of positions. (It’s not until the two-hour point of the film that they achieve total nudity, but it’s worth the wait.)

The director, Pascale Ferran, has a poetic feel for sensuality in all its forms, and Lady Chatterley is ultimately a film about the beauty and poetry of natural forces, particularly the force of two naked bodies writhing in an orgasmic embrace. Sometimes, watching this movie is like watching the Discovery Channel in high definition—there’s shot after shot of flowers, trees, flowing water, birds, little animals. But even though the film clocks in at nearly three hours, none of these images slow it down; Lady Chatterley never seems boring or overly long. Ferran has recreated the world of 1921 England, and once she has you there she intends to keep you there.

And let us not forget poor, crippled Sir Clifford. His character is far more developed here than in the book, where he remains almost a cipher and mostly in the background. Especially notable are Constance and Clifford’s frank conversations about the possibility of her having a baby with another man and of Clifford calling it his own, with just one stipulation: “He must be English and from good stock.”

This is a distinctly English story filtered through a French consciousness, with Constance and Clifford, in one scene, arguing about the merits of socialism, as if she’s supporting Ségolène Royal and he’s supporting Nicolas Sarkozy. In another curious scene, Constance walks into a store to pick up some groceries, and the clerk tells her how revitalized she looks, and that she’s heard rumors that Sir Clifford is recovering nicely from his war wounds and has apparently gotten his mojo back. Maybe in France such things were discussed over the purchase of a baguette, but in the fading years of the Victorian era in England, I doubt that shopkeepers openly alluded in public conversations to the private sexual activity of their landed-gentry customers.

Lady Chatterley
did have its moments of silliness, particularly towards the end when Constance and Parkin decorate each other’s genitalia with flowers and then run naked through the forest in the rain, like a satyr and nymph. But lovers, especially those in the full bloom of passion, can be silly, and this movie was otherwise so good, I can’t hold it against them.

2 comments:

  1. The following was posted on IMDB by Midnight Muse:

    Just read your review -- thanks. I don't understand why there hasn't yet been a decent film made of this novel, and I'm hoping this French version is an improvement on the other attempts.

    I always thought Kate Winslet would make a good Constance Chatterley, if there's ever another English version...


    ________________________________________

    I don't come from hell. I came from the forest.
    April 30, 2007 8:59 PM

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  2. Paul said...
    I have to point out that Lady Chatterley does not take place during the "fading years of the Victorian era in England", but rather during what the English often call "the Golden Twenties". The Victorian era lasted from 1837 to 1901 (although some people prefer, for reasons of historical trends and character, to view it as starting slightly earlier); it was followed by the Edwardian era, which lasted from 1901 to 1910 (although some people prefer, for reasons of historical trends and character, to view it as ending slightly later). The Edwardian era was followed by various periods that are not usually identified by their reigning monarchs. In 1921, the Victorian era had been over for twenty years, with a good deal of social upheaval in between; and so saying that Lady Chatterley takes place during the Victorian era makes about as much sense as saying that Fast Times at Ridgemont High takes place during the Eisenhower era.
    July 23, 2007 5:56 PM

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