Lady Chatterley's Lover tries and fails to have it both ways - The A.V. Club

If you are of a certain age, there’s a possibility you have a special connection to Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

(The same can not be said for the ribald sequels Young Lady Chatterley or, especially, Young Lady Chatterley II, co-starring Adam West.).

The young Constance Reid (Emma Corrin) marries well, to Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett), Baronet and heir to Wragby, an enormous estate near a mining village.

His wounds prevent him from taking any action in the marital bed, which Lady Chatterley isn’t thrilled about, but still seems pleased that her husband is alive at all.

While Sir Clifford doesn’t want to know the details, he’s okay with some quiet, mercenary cuckoldry if it means Lady Chatterley should become pregnant?

(And who is technically married to someone else, but let’s not get into all that.) More problematic is that Lady Chatterley’s rolls in the hay with Oliver aren’t brief, mechanical encounters, they are toe-curling, mind-splitting adventures in carnal ecstasy that drastically reconfigure her day-to-day interests.

It’s just a lot of huffing and puffing.

There are also occasional eye-roll moments from modern touches in the script, like Lady Chatterley, early in the film, saying Sir Clifford “makes me feel safe.” I checked a PDF of the book, and that dialogue is nowhere in there.