Lady Chatterley 2006

Pascale Ferran, the inspired director of Petit arrangements avec les morts, at last returns to the screen with this magnificent and moving exploration of love and desire that scooped five prizes at the César Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars) earlier this year. Adapted from D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, it is a story of an initiation into physical and emotional passion between a woman and a man whom class, circumstance and experience should have kept apart. Although focusing on Constance Chatterley (the sublime Marina Hands) and her heady emancipation, Ferran is sensitive to the transformation Parkin (the striking Jean-Louis Coulloc'h), Constance's gruff gamekeeper lover, also undergoes. Both lovers learn through their taming of each other, and their gradual mutual intimate awakening leads them to a larger consciousness of the world. We share their wonder, bewilderment and revelling in this startling knowledge. Sensual rather than erotic, lyrical, delicate and bold: une splendeur!