Lady Chatterley | |
---|---|
Directed by | Pascale Ferran |
Written by | Roger Bohbot Pascale Ferran |
Produced by | Gilles Sandoz |
Starring | Marina Hands Jean-Louis Coulloc'h Hippolyte Girardot Hélène Alexandridis |
Cinematography | Julien Hirsch |
Music by | Béatrice Thiriet |
Distributed by | Ad Vitam Distribution (France) |
Release date |
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Running time | 168 minutes 220 minutes (extended European edition) |
Country | France |
Language | French |
Budget | $2.3 million |
Box office | $4.7 million [1] |
Lady Chatterley is a 2006 French drama film by Pascale Ferran. The film is an adaptation of the 1927 novel John Thomas and Lady Jane , an earlier version of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), by D. H. Lawrence. It was released in France on 1 November 2006, followed by limited release in the U.S. on 22 June 2007 and in the UK on 24 August 2007. [2]
The film won the 2007 César Award for Best Film and stars Jean-Louis Coulloc'h and Marina Hands.
In an English country house, Sir Clifford Chatterley lives with his wife Constance. Severely wounded in World War I, he is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair. Constance tries to be a good wife, but he is distant and her life is empty. One day the maid is ill and Constance goes to see Parkin, the gamekeeper, about some pheasants for the table. Approaching the hut in the woods where he works, she sees him stripped to the waist and washing himself; the sight perturbs her.
She is falling into a depression, for which the doctor says there is no physical cause, urging her to take charge of her life and not give in as her mother did. Told that the first daffodils are blooming in the woods, she ventures out to pick some, but the effort tires her and she has to sit. Parkin grudgingly lets her rest on the steps of the hut, where she falls asleep. Feeling relaxed there, she resolves to visit more often and asks her husband for a duplicate key. He says he does not have one, so Constance asks Parkin, who is reluctant but as an employee has to, in the end, produce one.
She starts going to the hut regularly, taking an interest in the taciturn Parkin's work. When taking hold of a recently hatched pheasant chick, the tremor of new life in her hand sets Constance weeping uncontrollably. Parkin comforts her and, with her mute assent, has brief forceful sex. He is uneasy afterwards, but Constance feels liberated and starts meeting him secretly for more sessions. As he gets more comfortable with her, their lovemaking becomes more tender and intense, one day cavorting naked in the rain and decorating each other with flowers.
Sir Clifford confronts Constance with a rumor that she is pregnant, which she denies. The two discuss the possibility of her conceiving a child with another man, giving her a baby and Sir Clifford an heir. She says she might do so when she goes on holiday with her father and sister to the Mediterranean. Taking more of an interest in life, Sir Clifford buys a motorized wheelchair and ventures into the woods, but it gets stuck and stalls. In rage and frustration, he will let nobody help him, though eventually Constance and Parkin do push him home.
Before going off on holiday, Constance spends the whole night with Parkin in his cottage, from which he has cleared all traces of his wife, who has gone to live with another man. She tells him she has money from her dead mother and would like to buy him a small farm so that he could be independent. While on holiday, Constance gets a letter from Sir Clifford's nurse with all the local gossip. This includes the news that Parkin's wife, thrown out by her lover, returned to their home. Parkin went to court to get her thrown out, but was told he would have to divorce her first.
Constance heads back to England to find that Sir Clifford has been making further efforts to live more normally and has begun to walk on crutches. She also learns that, in a fight with the lover, Parkin was beaten up and, because of the scandal, has had to resign as gamekeeper. Going to see Parkin, she tells him she is pregnant, but he is not happy because the child will, in the eyes of the law, be Sir Clifford's. Having lost his job and his home, he will have to live with his mother and find work in a factory. He talks of emigrating to Canada, but Constance says that is no solution and wants him near her. Eventually, he accepts her offer of buying him a small farm and agrees that they must part until the baby is born. If she then decides to leave Sir Clifford, he says he will take her.
The film was shot in France's former Limousin region, at the Château de Montméry in Ambazac (Haute-Vienne) and in Marcillac-la-Croisille (Corrèze). [3]
Lady Chatterley's Lover is the final novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Florence, Italy, and in 1929, in Paris, France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies. The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.
In the United Kingdom, a gamekeeper is a person who manages an area of countryside to make sure that there is enough game for hunting, or fish for fishing, and acts as guide to those pursuing them.
A mistress or kept woman is a woman who is in a relatively long-term sexual and romantic relationship with someone who is married to a different person.
À Nos Amours is a 1983 French coming-of-age drama film directed by Maurice Pialat, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arlette Langmann. Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Pialat and Évelyne Ker, the story follows a 15-year-old girl, Suzanne (Bonnaire), as she experiences her sexual awakening and becomes promiscuous, but is unable to feel love. À Nos Amours won the César Award for Best Film in 1984.
Lady Chatterley's Stories is an erotic softcore TV show that aired on Showtime which ran for two seasons.
Same Old Song is a 1997 French comedy-drama film. It was directed by Alain Resnais, and written by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri. Jaoui and Bacri also starred in the film with Sabine Azéma, Lambert Wilson, André Dussollier and Pierre Arditi.
Nelly and Mr. Arnaud is a 1995 French film directed by Claude Sautet and starring Michel Serrault, Emmanuelle Béart and Jean-Hugues Anglade. It won the César Award for Best Director and Best Actor for Michel Serrault.
Marina Hands is a French stage and film actress. Hands is the daughter of British director Terry Hands and French actress Ludmila Mikaël, and the granddaughter of Ukrainian-Greek painter Pierre Dmitrienko. She studied acting at the Cours Florent and the CNSAD in France, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in England.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a 1981 erotic romantic drama film directed by Just Jaeckin, based on D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel of the same name. The film stars Sylvia Kristel and Nicholas Clay.
John Thomas and Lady Jane is a 1927 novel by D. H. Lawrence. The novel is the second, less widely known, version of a story that was later told in the more famous, once-controversial, third version Lady Chatterley's Lover, published in 1928. John Thomas and Lady Jane are the pet names for the genitalia of the protagonists.
"The book, according to a statement from Ferran, is a more simple, direct telling of the tale, with a few key differences. Parkin, the gamekeeper, is here a simple man from the village who chose his profession over being a miner, so that he could preserve his solitude. In the 1928 novel, he’s named Mellors and, though working-class, is a former army officer." — Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times arts critic
Lady Chatterley is a 1993 BBC television serial starring Sean Bean and Joely Richardson. It is an adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, first broadcast on BBC1 in four 55-minute episodes between 6 and 27 June 1993. A young woman's husband returns wounded after the First World War. Facing a life with a husband now incapable of sexual activity she begins an affair with the groundskeeper. The film reflects Lawrence's focus not only on casting away sexual taboos, but also the examination of the British class system.
Strange Affair is a 1981 French drama film directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre, and starring Michel Piccoli, Gérard Lanvin and Nathalie Baye.
Marius and Jeannette is a 1997 French film directed by Robert Guédiguian. It won the Louis Delluc Prize and the César Award for Best Actress, and received César nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Most Promising Actress and Best Writing. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
Hippolyte Girardot is a French actor, film director and screenwriter. He is the father of actress Ana Girardot.
The Reader is a 1988 French film directed by Michel Deville. The film won that year's Louis Delluc Prize, and was nominated for nine César Awards including Best Supporting Actor, won by Patrick Chesnais.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a 1955 French drama film directed by Marc Allégret who co-wrote screenplay with Philippe de Rothschild and Gaston Bonheur, based on the 1928 novel by D. H. Lawrence. In 1955, the film was banned in New York because it "promoted adultery", but it was released in 1959 after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court's decision.
Pascale Ferran is a French film director and screenwriter. In 2007, her film Lady Chatterley won five César Awards including Best Film, Best Cinematography and Best Adaptation. Her 2014 film Bird People was selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Ferran also wrote the screenplay for The Red Turtle, an animated film by Michael Dudok de Wit, that competed in the Hawaii International Film Festival on 12 November 2016.
All Is Forgiven is a 2007 French drama film written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve in her directorial debut. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film. It was also nominated for the César Award for Best First Feature Film at the 2008 César Awards.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a 2015 British historical romantic drama television film starring Holliday Grainger, Richard Madden and James Norton. It is an adaptation by Jed Mercurio of D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and premiered on BBC One on 6 September 2015.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a 2022 historical romantic drama film directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre from a screenplay by David Magee is the second American adaptation and the fourth overall adaptation, following the British and the French adaptations of the novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence. The film stars Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell.