This French/Belgium adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s seminal novel fails to capture much the essence of discovery and release that the book so powerfully conveys. The film’s moments of contemplative nature footage, and a retro outfitting of handheld camerawork, obvious zooming, and amateur holiday footage (the Super 8 camera used here a few decades out of sync with the rest of the film’s setting) work to create moments that are aesthetically pleasurable but ultimately plodding, surface level and without spirit.

The adaptation into French language is gorgeous aurally, so that even mundane sentences like “you’re my home now” carry a mystique and allure. Yet something is lost in the translation back into English subtitles; the movement from English to French to English leaks away much of the poeticism and depth of Lawrence’s dialogue and description. Not the fault of the filmmakers then, whose work has been a huge success in France, but consequently the film is of less value to those viewers who don’t speak French.

Added to this is the unusual effect of the English setting, combined with English proper nouns such as ‘Tevershall’ and ‘Dan Coutts,’ scattered about amongst the suddenly incongruous French accents. When husband Clifford insists that his wife Lady Chatterley find herself an English paramour, and avoid the dirty French whilst on holiday in Menton, one can’t help but wonder how the actor summoned the nerve to recite such lines.

Marina Hands is indeed a sublime looking Lady Chatterley, her naked body depicted as though an Egon Schiele drawing – outlined sensually yet roughly against the hulk of her gamekeeper lover, the ‘striking’ Jean-Louis Coulloc’h. A frightening looking man at first, Coulloc’h’s ragged appearance is striking for perhaps the wrong reasons. However his warm heart and slow opening-up lend him a vital sensitivity, which allows us to empathise to some extent with his character. Certain love scenes between Coulloc’h and Hands have a passion, recklessness and daring that is heart warming and delightful.

It is unfortunate that Hands, under Ferran’s direction, plays Lady Chatterley as such a sexy, naïve and innocently alluring girl; rather than as a young, sheltered woman repressed by social roles. In depicting her so the focus of the film shifts from Chatterley’s important, vital emancipation into a study in female beauty; and the contentious, moving and challenging heart of the novel becomes sadly lost amongst a film of bare breasts and meaningless autumn colours.—Melody Nixon