Film Reviews	Sexual Neo-Realism: Lady Chatterley by Girish Shambu

Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three,” wrote the poet Philip Larkin, “Between the end of the “Chatterley ban”/And the Beatles’ first LP.” D.H. Lawrence’s scandalous story of Lady Chatterley, written and banned in the 1920s, exists in three different versions. The French film Lady Chatterley is based on the second of the three versions, “John Thomas and Lady Jane.” (The title refers to the pet names the lovers playfully give to each other’s private parts.)

Pascale Ferran’s new film is the first of the Chatterley adaptations to be directed by a woman; it swept the Cesars, the French equivalent of the Oscars. It’s also the best film I’ve seen so far this year.

The plot of the movie is simple: In 1920s England, Constance (Marina Hands, in a star-making performance), the wife of a crippled aristocrat and war veteran, has a torrid love affair with the estate gamekeeper (Jean-Louis Colloc’h).

Through the years, Lawrence’s story has been culturally influential. It has left its traces on romance novels, late-night cable soft-core and pretentious erotic cinema. (I’m thinking here of the 1981 version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover starring Sylvia Kristel of Emmanuelle fame.) But the new film thankfully rescues the story from the generations of erotic cliché that Lawrence unwittingly inspired.

In order to understand how, we need to talk a bit about movie sex. Today the sheer range and frankness of sexual depiction in cinema is unprecedented. Movies unblinkingly show us sex that is, among other things, transgressive, sensational, neurotic, repellent, liberatory, animalistic, extreme. In general, I’m all for such attempts to push back the borders of permissiveness and aesthetic exploration. My only complaint is that, all too often, what goes missing in most films is an honest, un-sensational, un-spectacular depiction of sex as an everyday activity, something ordinary and yet extraordinary. What movie sex needs today is a strong and intelligent dose of realism, a feeling for day-to-day erotic realities.

Each of the half-dozen sex scenes in Lady Chatterley evokes a different feeling, exactly the way the experience is different each time for the characters. The first time, the encounter is abrupt and over in a jiffy; Constance is left a little puzzled and amused. As the lovers grow more comfortable with each other, they turn child-like—curious, trusting and playful. The film pays great, detailed attention to things most movies might leave on the cutting room floor. For example, by often filming the trysts in real time, Ferran lingers on the awkward practicalities and unexpected humor of sex.

Equally remarkable is the attention paid to nature and its connection to the physical pleasures of existence. With the help of close-ups and crisp editing, the voluptuous greenery of the woodlands gets as much screen time as the lead characters. In a utopian stroke, the movie juxtaposes the rhythms of the seasons with the lovers and their sensual discoveries.

For being based on a famous work of literature, this movie is strikingly low on dialogue. Lush images and vivid sound convey almost everything we need to know. I was reminded of a poignant line spoken by the silent-filmmaking giant D.W. Griffith in the 1940s, years after the silent era had ended, and sound films loudly ruled the world. What he missed in movies, he said, was the wind in the trees. Lady Chatterley’s celebration of nature and physical love occurs through hundreds of little touches—small, wordless tremors. It’s a bit like hearing the faint music of “the wind in the trees.”