I may have heard about this film, I knew it was a costume drama or something, I didn't realise it was French or based on a less known erotic tale by D.H. Lawrence, but I was going to watch whatever. Basically in a large estate near Sheffield, Sir Clifford Chatterley (Hippolyte Girardot) who has become paralysed from the waist down after returning from the Great War. His caring young wife Lady Constance 'Connie' Chatterley (Marina Hands) is lifeless and with no self strength, and she finds a quiet hut retreat when her physician prescribes the open air. This hut is where the estate's games keeper Parkin (Jean-Louis Coullo'ch) lives and works, and what starts as an awakening with nature, pheasant chick and daffodils growing, soon gets more intense. Connie and Parkin soon begin an affair and become passionate lovers, she now feels radiant and he has opened up himself as well, the only thing stopping becoming much more is class and age difference. One of the most memorable scenes sees the lovers running naked through the woods while it is raining, making love in the mud, washing off and placing green flowers on their bodies. In the end Connie takes a trip to France with her father Sir Malcolm (Bernard Verleyand) sister, and the affair comes to a subtle end and she stays with her crippled husband. Also starring Hélène Alexandridis as Mrs. Bolton, Hélène Fillières as Hilda, Sava Lolov as Tommy Dukes, Jean-Baptiste Montagut as Harry Winterslow and Christelle Hes as Kate. Hands is really pretty with and without clothes as the free spirited Lady needing to find herself, and Coullo'ch gets his moments as her lover wanting this resolution, it is a simple enough story, the nudity does not stop you lapping up the love story, slightly long, but overall a most watchable period romantic drama. Very good!
Review of Lady Chatterley
