Lady Chatterley's Lover (1982)

Absolutely Fantastic

There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Blistering performances.

I was expecting to see torrid love scenes but instead it was crude poking and then i discovered it was all about class snobbery and jealously ... i finally capitulated and turned it off .... if you really think a woman wants to be treated like this then it won't be your cup of tea either

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.

If you like nudity, and watching couples f..k, there's a lot of it here. I've seen the same scenarios, with films like the great art house film, Breaking The Waves or the Roadshow's Vibrant Video's Erotic Sex Games. I admit I do like it, but to me, this was just another skin flick, dressed up in a serious, and moving drama, which it isn't. It's no surprise that 70's sex symbol, the late Sylvia Kristel, a good capable actress, would be linked with this, as I really didn't see anything impressive with this. It just comes down to everything she does. I really found her performance, mature and very sexy, here, where she really held her own, and never lacked. Clay, Lady Chatterly's husband is a paraplegic, and IMPOTENT, so our delicious Ms Chatterly must seek sexual fulfillment somewhere else, so why not the estate's fit stud lumberjack. This really brings out his angry and enraged side, something I see in these scenarios from other films, one I previously mentioned. Another example but out of this scenario, where I was drawing on the very erotically charged. Cage pic, Zandalee. But before seeing it, I knew what to expect and I was right, a Kristel, skin film, in the facade of something more, or respectable too. But I do respect the nude and sex bits.

It must have seemed a high concept idea of genius to the producers, Golan and Globus of Cannon films: re-unite the director and star of the soft-porn worldwide hit Emmanuelle for a big screen version of the most famous erotic novel of them all, D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The film, for a British erotic flick of the time, has relatively high production values and a slew of classy but less well-known British character actors in the supporting roles. Director Jaekin makes his usual painstakingly beautiful but somewhat chocolate box soft focus images, and the whole film glides before the eye very pleasantly.The first part of the film is pretty good as well. The upper class life of the Chatterleys is well delineated, there's some breathtaking tracking shots around the Chatterley mansion and the war sequence is convincing. The first sighting of by Lady Chatterley of Mellors naked and soaping himself by his hut is sexy and ripe. But once the affair begins and the two of them are making love on a regular basis, the film's pace slows down and its dramatic level evens to a flat-line. There's some intriguing cutting between the lovers in each others arms and the crippled Lord Chatterley languishing in his bed, but it's all a bit too tastefully done - Lawrence's earthy eroticism isn't captured, nor is the script wise to have lost his salty filthy dialogue. What you get is a sort of motion picture version of high-class erotic prints.Some of Lawrence's diagnosis of the crippled state of the British aristocratic class after WW1 remains intact, and the film is helped by a very fine performance indeed by Shane Briant as the emasculated Lord. Kristel is never less than watchable as milady, and Nicolas Clay has the looks to suggest Mellors' virility, even though the director never lets him exercise it. The last quarter of the film seems rushed, and a promising sojourn to France only scratches the surface of what might have been a Sirk-like interlude of realisation that the protagonist's class and social circle offers nothing that a virile man can bring her.Best filed under intriguing failures, artistically and (to Cannon Films' chagrin) at the box office.