Tribeca 2007: Lady Chatterley

Lady Chatterley is award-winning (1994 Camera d’Or for her first film, Coming to Terms with the Dead)French filmmaker Pascale Ferran’s adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s John Thomas and Lady Jane, one of three versions of the novel perhaps better known as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, screening in competition at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, here in New York City until May sixth. The story follows a love affair between Constance, the 23 year old wife of Clifford Chatterley, an educated, wealthy mine owner bound to a wheelchair after being wounded in battle during the first World War, and Parkin, the gamekeeper of the estate (a ‘gamekeeper’ is a man employed by a land owner to monitor game and deter poachers, and also a term that recently entered pop culture as the title of a Guy Ritchie-created comic book).

Bored to death, almost literally, as the dull cycle of afternoon tea, reading to pass the time, and bathing her husband has taken a toll on both her physical and mental health, Constance finds a strong desire awakened in her after she accidentally stumbles upon a shirtless Parkin bathing behind his cottage. Soon Constance is spending less time indoors with her husband, and more time outside on the estate, picking flowers, gardening, and spending more time around Parkin.

But Parkin is not a seducer, not a hulking mass of muscle and good looks that sweeps Constance off her feet and takes her to the limits of physical pleasure, but instead kind of rugged looking. His body is thickly built, but not sculpted. He’s quiet, shy, and finds comfort in solitude and in nature. Though gamekeepers are associated with hunting, we do not see Parkin hunt (though he does carry a rifle and have a dog). He spends much of his time caring for the pheasants he is breeding. When Constance and Parkin finally have sex, he seems to know what to do, but is by no means an expert – their first encounters are timid, awkward experiences, with both characters as shy about their own bodies as they are about each others’. They are like teenagers, trying sex for the first time, shy but not shameful, and unsure of what to do. As the story progresses, they become more passionate, less shy, and the physical gives way to the emotional. Though it manifests sexually, the attraction between the two lovers helms from a much deeper vein than lust. Both characters live in worlds of solitude – Constance surrounded by people, but without any sensation, physical or emotional, and Parkin, at the same time part of the physical world and totally alone in it. He brings her from a cold, silent existence into a world of warmth, passion, and life. For him, she is the only person in his life he has not had to hide his emotions from.

Kerran has created an absolute masterpiece, the camera and art direction perfectly in sync with the progression of the story, engaging characters, and rife with multi-layered meaning. This film is the most intensely honest, passionate, and beautiful romance you will ever see on screen.