Lady Chatterley's Liebhaber (1981)

Lady Chatterley’s Liebhaber: Directed by Just Jaeckin. With Sylvia Kristel, Shane Briant, Nicholas Clay, Ann Mitchell. After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband’s consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

“I read one of D. H. Lawrenceu0026#39;s novel in university as part of an English course I was taking, and I found it utterly boring and not making me want to seek out his other works. The only reason why I rented this Lawrence adaptation was that it was produced by famed schlockmeisters Menahem Golan and Yorman Globus, who made some really entertaining trashy movies. This was one of the few times they tried for u0026quot;respectabilityu0026quot;, though they chose a story that could also be mined for exploitation material.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut the movie fails both at its serious attempts and with its attempts at exploitation. The script has too many faults that distance the audience. The setup of the situation at the beginning of the movie goes so fast that thereu0026#39;s no time to set up characters and make us see what they are feeling. This flaw with the characters continues as the movie goes on, and I was not sure why many times characters did what they did. Oddly, there are also a number of scenes that serve no purpose – if they had eliminated those scenes, and used the extra few minutes to pump up the characters, Iu0026#39;m pretty sure the movie would be a lot better.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs for the erotic element of the movie, itu0026#39;s not there. Even for 1981, the idea of taking a lover must have seem old hat to audiences. The nudity and sex in the movie is not the least bit erotic despite full frontal nudity and explicit sex scenes. Some of this might be blamed on the below average production values – the movie has a murky look throughout, and thereu0026#39;s not much effort to beef up the backgrounds with extras or anything that might have taken time and expense to make.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eEven if you are a Golan/Globus fanatic like I am, odds are youu0026#39;ll find this as dreary as I did.”