Cortechba Overrated

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

denisa-dellinger I saw this film when I was in my twenties. Sylvia Kristal of the famed Emmanuel series of erotic films seemed to play this film straighter than her previous films. If she is making a film you can sure bet it has a little nudity and a little sex. I believe that the producers of the film chose her because that was what they needed and they knew she would deliver. And deliver she did. I read this book years later and just watched the DVD I had bought for a couple of dollars. It follows an abbreviated plotline from the book but barely captures the characters in their full breadth. The actors that were chosen were almost perfect for their characters and I wish there was a little more time for development. The location was beautiful as well as the twenties costumes. The film should be attacked as a literary work of art, not so much sex although sex was an important part of it. I would deem this version of Lady Chatterley's Lover as women's erotica. That's how it served me. 1981 and the era of the seventies seemed to produce lots of soft core frontal nudity and simulated sex and in viewing it again, I had to adjust my thinking to that era. The British miniseries made for Masterpiece Theater seemed to capture the spirit a bit more. I see there are other versions but the best way to view this story is to read the uncensored version.

TheLittleSongbird Lady Chatterley's Lover is understandably controversial but it is also a compelling read, though not a personal favourite. This film is not exactly terrible as there are some good things to see on display but the maligning it has gotten is as understandable as the book being controversial. The photography mostly has a nostalgic quality to it while the costumes and sets are exquisite in colour and detail. The score is seductive and hauntingly beautiful, Sylvia Kristel is a real beauty, the second half is an improvement over the first half with some appropriately steamy moments and Nicholas Clay as well as being astonishingly handsome and sexy is quite good as Oliver. Unfortunately Kristel's acting talents do not translate here, throughout she is very wooden and bland, while on the other side of the scale Shane Briant's hammy over-acting grates after a while. The supporting cast, and there are some talented actors here, are unable to do much with characters that are written to caricatures(blander than that in some cases). Some of the sexy moments are sensual but too many and most of them verge on lowbrow and too much like a porn film, the book is an explicit one but it's not that trashed up. The script is very underwritten and banal, it is difficult to take seriously anything that the actors say, while the storytelling is really dull with non-existent passion in the first half, the main reason being that while the basic story of the book is intact, the prose, characterisations and passion(mostly) are barely scarce. Some of the editing looks hastily-put together too. All in all, Lady Chatterley's Lover looks good but it is dull and underwritten, and takes the sexual nature of the book to extremes, well at least to me it did. 4/10 Bethany Cox

semioticz 1981 VHS & 2005 DVD are based uponby British novelist D.H. Lawrence's last (1928). In it's time, "Lady Chatterley's Love" was (re)viewed as "sexually scandalous"; so much so, D.H. Lawrence suffered continuously due to charges of obscenity. Like the (1928) novel, the (2005) DVD contains direct depictions of different-gender adulterous sexual intercourse. Many 'obscene' (at least for 1928!) sexual words are part of Lawrence's novel & the screenplay. As a result, the novel upon which the movie is based wasn't fully published in Britain, though it had long been available in other countries.During the 2nd half of the 20th century, in 1960, Penguin books bought out the expurgated edition & was summarily prosecuted for violating the Obscene Publication Act of 1959! Even the trial was scandalous; though, the publishers prevailed & were acquitted. Their acquittal has been viewed by academic literary & cultural critics to this day as a catalyst for the new freedom of literature & artistic expression. Some critics have regarded Lawrence as the greatest British man novelist of the early 20th century (Virginia Woolf, the woman).On to the film: it is equal to the novel in its sexological study of a paralyzed Sir Clifford Chatterley, who strongly advises his wife, Lady Constance Chatterley, to find a lover for herself in order to satisfy what Sir Clifford cannot ever give her, or so he thought: sexual fulfillment. (That belief would seem quite naive now since a wide variety of sexually satisfying techniques do not require a man who is paralyzed to be fully functioning! What is sexual & what is sexual satisfaction & pleasure has measurably changed since 1928).Lady Constance Chatterley reluctantly takes her husband's advice, being quite young & beautiful. But, after beginning a very sexually intense affair with a proletariat man, Mellors, their butch & brawny country gamekeeper, Lady Chatterley's affair shocks her husband who suggested it & the high society in which they take part.It is definitely not a movie for children because the sexual content is steamy & blatant. By contemporary standards, it is still a story of a scandalous love affair with an interesting plot; but, certainly the movie is not pornographic or unusual ("Asylum" is somewhat similar, for example). It is as much a sexology of 1920's British social class mores as anything else. Because it is a period piece that does examine an era & the moral standards of a particular class of a society, it is a more than notorious for its history of scandal: "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is loaded with Lawrence's observations & remarks about the mixture of mores for British bourgeoisie society & its double standard for women's sexuality.

djensen1 Pretty typical Golan & Globus production with better than average art direction and cinematography. The estate is beautiful--as is Sylvia Kristel--but the adaptation is flat and whole thing feels flabby.A bit of sex goes with the story, of course, and it's done well enough; but it's nothing like Kristel's soft core films. The acting is competent thruout, and the filmmakers take pains to maintain the essence of the English class struggle. But some of the jealousy and social indignation feels contrived.I loved Lord Chatterly's gas-powered wheelchair for zipping around the grounds, altho why he didn't install an elevator in the mansion is a mystery.