Nearly 100 years ago, the United States banned Lady Chatterley’s Lover from bookshelves. D. H. Lawrence’s novel, full of raunchy thigh-gripping and sexual escapades, had been published in Italy in 1928, but was far too obscene for Americans in 1929.
Then, in 1955, a French film adaptation of the story was prohibited from American theaters for “promoting adultery.” L’Amant de lady Chatterley finally premiered here four years later, but the country had already made its stance clear: The tale of Lady Chatterley was a forbidden delight made only for the privacy of one’s own home. It was scandalous. It was addictive. It was too good.
The novel has been made into various movies and TV shows over the past century, becoming a staple in horny entertainment with adaptations landing at BBC, in theaters, and now, on Netflix. Whereas movie fans have been sent into a tizzy over Netflix’s decision to keep movies like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery out of theaters, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the perfect film for home viewing. Erotic, sensual, and incredibly tender, Netflix’s adaptation of the 1928 story is consumed with the desire to hook its audiences.
We meet Lady Chatterley, aka Connie Reid (Emma Corrin, who you may recognize as young Princess Diana from The Crown) at a cheerful moment in her life: her wedding day. She has just wed Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett), to her family’s delight. He’s a nice young man with an opulent estate, but Connie promises that’s not her sole reason for marrying him—she does, in fact, love him. Here, right after the wedding, is a key place to meet our heroine: No longer simply “Connie” and now “Lady Chatterley,” she has lost all ownership of herself, her emotions, and thoughts. Her entire being now belongs to Clifford.
After he’s sent to fight in World War I, Clifford returns home paralyzed from the waist down. While Connie struggles to tend to his needs, she attempts to rekindle the flame they shared after their wedding night. But Clifford is no longer able to have sex. She pleasures herself in solitude instead, hiding in corners of their mansion for alone time while Clifford rests. As in love as they may be, Clifford brushes Connie off time and time again, until he demands she have a child. It can’t be his, as that’s no longer possible. But as long as no one knows he’s unable to conceive and Connie keeps the identity of her suitor under wraps, he’d like her to have a child (“his” child) out of an affair.
Connie loathes this idea. It’s not that Clifford desires a surrogate child; he requests that Connie sneak behind his back, sleep with another man, and then leave him as soon as she’s pregnant. Not long after, though, Connie starts sneaking off to “read” in the cottage in the field of their estate. It happens that handsome, gruff, strongman (who still can cradle a baby chick in his muscular hand) Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell), an outdoor servant for the Chatterley estate, resides in the cottage. At first, Oliver and Connie share yearning glances—think the hand-grabbing scene in Pride and Prejudice, over and over again. Then, they’re bolting through forests to see each other, screwing on trees and in the mud.
Connie and Oliver’s erotic scenes, which focus so intently on her pleasure and the way it frees her from marital bounds, feels akin to the forbidden romance shared by Ada (Holly Hunter) and George (Harvey Keitel) in The Piano. In fact, every intimate detail is touched with residue from Jane Campion’s sensual delight, from sex in the forest that leaves Connie’s back spotted with dirt to rainwater-soaked clothing after the couple leap onto each other in the rain. When Oliver brushes his fingertips against Connie’s smooth back, the attraction is palpable—it’s as if you, too, feel a lover’s hand running down your spine.
Much of this allure is thanks to the film’s director, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, the perfect fit to helm an adaptation of a novel as titillating as this one. Clermont-Tonnerre—who chronicled the profound relationship between an incarcerated man and his horse in her directorial debut, The Mustang—realizes the gravity of the connection between two souls. With her delicate touch, Lady Chatterley’s Lover transcends being some run-of-the-mill horny Netflix movie. The adaptation is a moving ode to love and the lengths we’ll go to keep a blaze burning.
The romance between Connie and Oliver is the key base supporting all of the other sexual elements of the film. The plot isn’t on the fringes, here, pushed aside to move sex scenes to the front. Our love story takes center stage, with the intimate sequences leveling up the connection between the two leads. There has been discourse surrounding the question of “Are sex scenes really necessary?”, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover gives us a firm answer: Yes. Not only do we need them, we deserve sex scenes like the vibrant, intense ones that this film provides.
The 2022 adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover should, in fact, be banned from America just as well. How—after seeing two young lovers pine over each other in a quaint cottage, beside a fireplace, or on a sunny hillside—are we meant to return to the real world? Is there any way that us 21st-century folk can abandon our phones, our metropolitan lifestyles, and our dating apps, so that we, too, can experience a swirling romance in the sprawling English countryside, prancing around naked in the rain while avoiding all commitments. Alas, it’s far too easy to get swept up in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Ban it now, before I watch it 40 times over!
