Film Trust Blog

The story of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ comes full circle, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say half-circle, with this new film version by Pascale Ferran, which won the top film prize at the Cesars.

Half-circle, because Ferran’s version is a 180 degree turn from the reception and interpretations that the novel has long been known for. D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ is mostly known in Britain for the 1960 trial against Penguin Books, who had tried to publish the book. This was well after Lawrence’s death and created a debate about censorship in regards to pornography that continues to this day. The trial led to an increasing liberalisation of what was allowed in literature and art.

The argument for the defence was mainly based on the idea that ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ being a work of art, of higher quality than most pornography, should not be classed as such. It’s an argument that has been used to launch one silver screen adaptation after another of dubious merit and intention. Many of them used the novel’s artistic status as a backdoor to create soft-core pornography, a genre that came to be known as the ‘blue movie’. In fact, because of this, and despite ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ being the work of a British author, the novel has already had two previous adaptations in France, the main one being the 1981 version, produced by Just Jaeckin and starring Silvya Krystel, previously producer and star of EMMANUELLE (1974).

Pascale Ferran’s interpretation removes these associations as the director chose to follow the less well known 2nd version of the novel ‘John Thomas and Lady Jane’. Ferran’s adaptation is short of the sexual scenes that have made the story notorious - not that they are completely missing, but Ferran prefers to focus on the mood and development of the adulterous relationship between the upper class Lady Chatterley (Marina Hands) and her gamekeeper Parkin (an excellent debut from Jean-Louis Coullo’ch). This well-chosen act of self-censorship helps to move the film away from issues of scandal and the novel’s history and concentrate on the story at the heart of the novel. It also means that the film never has to bother with the long passages of philosophising which are missing from the version that Ferran decided to use (James Joyce reportedly at one point referred to the novel as “Lady Chatterbox’s Lover”).

The film becomes an elegant meditation on a love story rife with obstacles, focusing on establishing an atmosphere and setting for its characters. It is long - almost three hours long - and was long in the making, with shooting taking up six months, when two months is considered lengthy (this was partly because Ferran wanted to capture the changing seasons). But the meditative, leisurely pace pays off, giving the characters’ improbable relationship time to take hold in the imagination.

That it won the Prix Cesar is a high recommendation indeed, given that literary adaptations are rarely given France’s equivalent of the Oscar. Ferran has been a long time arriving, despite being 40 this is only her third film. A graduate of France’s respected IDHEC (now Femis) academy, she has spent most of her career collaborating with fellow filmmakers, still managing to win the Camera d’Or prize for young filmmakers for her ‘Petits Arrangements avec les Morts,’ (1994). She had also recently worked on the dubbing for Stanley Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT, perhaps giving her a taste for handling a film with baggage.

One last connection between British literature and France can serve as conclusion; Valence, in France, is where D.H. Lawrence chose to be for his final days, and his resting place. Perhaps a French adaptation will also help to put an end to the dominating shadow of scandals past.

Eugenio Triana