Lady Chatterley 2006

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Like a sprawling afternoon spent reading Lawrence, Ferran's film is a welcome and often enthralling escape -- for Connie, and for us. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: I found the first half-hour a snooze, but once I adjusted to the movie's rhythms, I was completely enraptured. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Ferran's sureness in charting every step in the couple's discovery of each other never falters; when they eventually find the opportunity to remove their clothes before having sex, it's a major achievement, and celebrated as such. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: It's fairly baffling to see a story about animal desires presented with such a lack of animal immediacy. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Sensual in escalating degrees of heat, but the film's eroticism, which is substantial, is laid on with a caress. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It's a special pleasure to report that the French Lady Chatterley is the most frankly sensual movie in memory. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: [A] startling, womanly adaptation of a lesser-known, more direct version of D.H. Lawrence's famous novel, one of three he wrote. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: Excellent performances by everyone involved help you overlook the incongruity of French-speaking actors in traditional English settings. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: A film of sun-dappled beauty and unbridled joys that arrive as much as a surprise to the audience as they do to the characters. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: It captures the animal attraction we call lust and carefully tracks its evolution to true love. For all its faults, this beautifully shot, sexually graphic film is a gem. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: Intelligent and tasteful, even while being sexually frank. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Lady Chatterley leads us into the thickets of D.H. Lawrence's fiercely tender saga of a sexual communion between a man and a woman of different classes, but similarly affected in their enforced solitudes by the wonders and glories of nature. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: A long, but never lazy, celebration of the natural world, of sexual desire and discovery, and of the peculiar social order of early-20th-century Britain, Lady Chatterley is also a heartbreaking story of true love. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: All of the qualities its admirers see in the film are indeed there, and visible, but I was not much moved. Lawrence wrote much better novels that inspired much better movies... Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It's a profoundly thought-out picture about a love affair that blooms organically and spontaneously. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: This latest effort, winner of five Cesar awards (the French Oscar) including for best film and actress, is supremely sensuous -- while presenting an intriguingly complex Constance. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: A picture about passion that invites none, a picture far easier to admire than to adore. Read more

Susan Walker, Toronto Star: Director Pascale Ferran is true to the spirit of the book and gives us an eyeful, of both the glorious countryside and the lovers' physiques. Read more

Lisa Nesselson, Variety: Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Nearly three hours long, Lady Chatterley passes as swiftly as the summer shower. This is not so much a love story (and even less a story about love) than it is a movie of passionate loveliness. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: [The director] cannily turns [the characters'] corporeal discoveries into a moral mission, two desperately lonely souls crying for spiritual freedom in a world of moral constriction. Read more