Why Can’t Cinema Satisfy Lady Chatterley’s Lover?

D.H. Lawrence’s provocative novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was originally completed in 1928, but it was not widely available until 1960. Even then, the book’s strong language, graphic descriptions of sex and sexuality, and meditations on bolshevism and class were too much for the British government, spawning obscenity trials across the globe. In the years since, propelled by its infamy as the ultimate example of English literature’s forbidden fruit, the book became Lawrence’s most popular work; known better by its purported vulgarity and sexual content than for its merits or compelling themes explored. With its reputation preceding it, Lady Chatterley’s Lover endures to this day in popular culture.

In November of this year, a new adaptation of the novel was released on Netflix, directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and starring Emma Corrin, Jack O’Connell, Matthew Duckett, and Joely Richardson. The plot is the same as the novel: soon after Lord Clifford Chatterley weds Connie, the free spirited daughter of a bohemian artist, he gets sent off to The Great War and is injured. Paralyzed from the waist down and unable to have sex, Clifford encourages Connie to take a lover in order to provide an heir for his title and estate. Unexpectedly, she begins an affair with the estate’s gamekeeper, Mellors, causing turmoil and scandal when the pair fall in love. It’s not easy to adapt a novel that once caused furor but seems relatively tame by today’s standards. Parts of the story may continue to shock – the novel is laden with profanity that could be unexpected for the time period – but in just under a century since the novel’s publication, explicit descriptions of sex are now common in mainstream romantic novels. Not only that, but while the novel would have been impossible to adapt accurately in 1960, when the book was finally available, in the years since many types of sex and nudity in film have been destigmatized. A modern day adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover has to rely on much more than shock in order to appeal to a 21st century audience.

This isn’t to say the original book has nothing to offer beyond the many court cases and bannings it inspired. Where the book has lost its power to offend and titillate in its erotic scenes, it has retained an awe-inspiring portrayal of a woman’s self-actualization, along with frank and insightful musings on female sexuality. The story of Connie Chatterley as a woman, in particular a sexually active and socially conscious woman navigating life with aristocratic and/or entitled men, feels much more noteworthy than the supposed love story between Connie and gamekeeper Mellors. Connie’s story, her thoughts and feelings as she explores her sexuality and pushes back against the strict morays of her time feel much more engaging than her falling in love – a romance that, in comparison, becomes downplayed through Mellors characterization as, well, a bit of a dickhead. The main takeaway of the book is less a story of true love that knows no class lines, but instead a story of what it is like to be a woman and a sexual being in a world where men are, unintentionally or not, hostile to the idea that women are multifaceted. Mellors is a great lover, but he, like Connie’s husband Clifford or her previous lover Michaelis, are disinterested in Connie’s emotional and even sexual needs. 

All this being said, this new Netflix adaptation is deeply disappointing, poorly translated for the screen. Some of this is unsurprising for a book turned feature film, namely the flattening of Connie and Mellors as characters. Clifford, by contrast, is developed, thanks largely to a strong performance by newcomer Matthew Duckett, but Connie and Mellors are uninteresting and lacking in chemistry – even with Emma Corrin trying their best to carry the film. Mellors is reduced to little more than a handsome automaton, his grating personality from the novel excised but not replaced with new characteristics, which would have been a welcome change. Connie, who feels so real in the pages of the novel, is similarly devoid of personality, and lacks the self awareness and quiet sense of humor Connie of the book used to get through the frustrations of her life. The cinematography, particularly during the film’s sex scenes, is absolutely baffling. It’s as if the person behind the camera could not keep their hands steady – the sex scenes are downright nauseating, with the camera constantly moving haphazardly. It’s not only deeply distracting, in as far as it might be stylistic or intended, but it doesn’t thematically develop the sex scenes at all, not elaborating on the points of view of Mellors or Connie, or conveying the intensity of their coupling. The erratic movement instead comes across as amateur, as if the choice to use a handheld camera was easier than making sure these scenes were intelligible and dynamic in their sensuality.

It may be that Lady Chatterley’s Lover is unsuspectingly difficult to adapt. Perhaps the definitive movie version is already out there, as I have not seen the acclaimed French adaptation from 2007. I did watch the 1993 BBC miniseries for comparison, and I was similarly disappointed with the miniseries as I was with the new Netflix movie. The miniseries holds much promise, both with its title, which is simply Lady Chatterley, emphasizing the story’s actual main character and priority, and with its director, the legendary expert on excess, Ken Russell. Russell first gained notoriety for his 1969 film adaptation of Women in Love, the definitive movie version of a D.H. Lawrence work, one that is both meditative and incendiary. By 1993, Russell’s career had waned, and the famously prolific director had not made a movie in two years. He returned to the BBC for Lady Chatterley, and while the mini series was well watched upon airing, it has, in the decades since, fallen into obscurity as one of Russell’s least remembered works. Its lack of status in his oeuvre is admittedly earned, as, like the 2022 film adaptation, it suffers from a dearth of chemistry between leads Joely Richardson (it is a nice touch that Richardson plays Mrs. Bolton in the 2022 film as a nod to her earlier lead role) and Sean Bean, a mediocre performance by Richardson that renders Connie without depth, and very poorly shot sex scenes. I would not be surprised to find out that constraints by the BBC meant Russell could not get more creative with the work, as his usual flamboyance is sorely lacking.

But the biggest problem with both the 2022 and 1993 adaptations is not the thinly drawn characters or the poorly filmed sex scenes (though the latter is rather egregious for erotic art), it is instead how they both leave what makes the novel continue to endure and intellectually provoke on the cutting room floor. On one hand, it’s not surprising that Michaelis is removed completely from both of these adaptations, as he is a character who is not integral to the main plot. In the novel, Michaelis reacts angrily when Connie reaches orgasm after him, something she brings on herself. He bursts out to her: “You couldn’t go off at the same time as a man, could you? You’d have to bring yourself off! You’d have to run the show!” This is the last time Connie sees Michaelis, and his words surprise and hurt her. “Men had no real glamour for a woman: if you could fool yourself into thinking they had, even as she fooled herself over Michaelis, that’s the best you could do.” By removing Michaelis, and his angered outburst when Connie doesn’t cum when he does, there’s no emphasis on Connie’s ultimate dissatisfaction with the system of patriarchy and the way it oppresses women’s sexuality in general. 

Michaelis’s cruel and unexpected words, the dismissive way Clifford’s friends speak about their wives, and Clifford’s preoccupation with an heir above all else, all on top of the colliers striking happening in the background, culminate to create the stifling world Connie attempts to find pleasure in. Disillusionment is the primary emotion Connie feels when interacting with men, caught up in the rigid aristocratic system that devalues her as less than human. By removing this crucial early and unsatisfying love affair, the audiences are robbed of the heart of the story; of Connie’s inner journey and her attempts to find sexual satisfaction, which she does find partially with Mellors. Without the context of Michaelis, the central romance is reduced to a dull and cliche tale of forbidden love and extramarital straying, not reflecting what makes the book unique or subversive decades after it was first written. Her romance with Mellors is different because he too understands and has experienced dehumanization by the system represented by the Chatterley estate. A scene where Connie and Mellors climax at the same time contrasts directly with her final night with Michaelis, but distance between them at the end of the novel due to patriarchy and classism, a la Swept Away (1974), still drives home the disillusionment Connie feels in relationships, making her affair with Mellors far more complicated than simply one of true love, and that Connie as a character is the center of the novel, not the romance.

In the 2022 film, the focus is shifted to only being about the romance, with much attention given to the balance between lust and true love, something very much challenged at every turn in the book and not confronted in an interesting way in the movie. Connie’s sister Hilda chastises Connie for her relationship with Mellors, specifically what she sees as Connie’s inability to differentiate sex and love from one another, which is a rather disappointing interpretation of Connie’s sexuality and sexual desires in the original novel. While the film challenges Hilda’s assertions, as it’s clear Connie is sure about her feelings for Mellors, the film forgoes exploring Connie’s complicated and contradictory relationships with sex and love for a simplistic and two dimensional romance that defies the odds.

Adaptation does not and should not require complete fealty to the material being adapted, and filmmakers bringing books to the big screen should not feel obligated to provide a completely faithful adaptation, as much as the naive “the book is better” crowd may bemoan. The excitement of adaptation is in new voices bringing themselves into conversation with the source material, updating, excising, or completely changing portions of the story, while hopefully keeping the core or spark that made the source compelling to begin with. Adaptation has no rules, and there are times when reading a book and then immediately watching the movie version is a poisoning of the well for the film. I’m willing to accept that my interpretations of the movie were in part colored by the fact that I had just read the book, but I also value the creative liberty artists are entitled to when adapting something from words to moving images. That said, self actualization is a core part of the novel. It not only gives Connie depth as a character but it provides incredible potential for any adaptation intended to modern day audiences – especially those interested in a story about a woman’s sexual satisfaction, something subversive and still rare to see in mainstream film.