AllMovie

Lady Chatterly's Lover, D. H. Lawrence's classic novel about liberation -- both sexual and social -- might have seemed tame by the post-Studio 54 era of 1981, but director Just Jaeckin adapts the tale wonderfully. The simple story of Constance Chatterly, an aristocratic wife, whose paraplegic husband gives her leave to take a lover, then balks when she falls legitimately in love with the estate's groundskeeper is told through the gauzy sheen of Constance's journey toward self actualization, as she slowly but surely shakes off the strictures of class and emotional inhibition. No stranger to the erotic and no scaredy-cat when it comes to depicting sex on screen, Jaeckin conjures on film the perfect combination of pensive, 70's storytelling, Merchant-Ivory melodrama, and Emmanuelle-style softcore sex. The result is equal parts emotional and sensual, titillating and thought provoking.