He does, however, want an heir, and he’s open-minded enough to suggest, to Connie’s initial horror, that she go out and discreetly find a suitable lover to serve as sperm donor. If Lawrence’s ideas were radical, and sometimes unpopular, in the late 1920s, they can still rattle us today-and maybe we need to be rattled. In a world where we always seem to be recoiling, where refusal and fear are always easier than saying yes, Clermont-Tonnerre and her actors strive for boldness. The picture is, in places, a bit decorous set on an estate in the English countryside, it’s gorgeous to look at, which always sets off the old Masterpiece Theater alarm-does this thing look good only because this gorgeous landscape is impossible to ruin? (The cinematography is by veteran DP Benoît Delhomme, and it’s sparkling no matter what, as are Emma Fryer’s costumes.) But even if you believe you’re settling in for just another Lady Chatterley adaptation-there have been plenty already-at least this is a film, a rather sexually explicit one, that’s reaching for something rather than shrinking away. Full disclosure: I haven’t read it either, but now I will, given the complexity, ambition and beauty of Clermont-Tonnerre’s film. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a book many people think they know even if they’ve never read it. To rescue a book from its status as a punchline is a noble goal, and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre has pulled it off with her thoughtful and radiantly carnal adaptation of D.H.
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