Lady Chatterley
Kino International | Release Date: June 22, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
There's an adult life force in every frame of this luxuriously paced work, even in the sight of rain and a lady's stocking. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
A masterful 168-minute piece of storytelling that never ceases to be gripping in spite of its measured pace. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
This Lady Chatterley, winner of five César awards in France, feels bracingly fresh, vital and modern. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
The supreme achievement of this lovely film — all three rhythmic, leisurely hours of it -- is that what borders on faintly fascistic body worship in the novel instead feels as perfectly natural to us as it does to the lovers. Lawrence would kvell. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The most frankly sensual movie in memory. Winner of five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its luminous star, Marina Hands, it has found the soul of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
It's a movie as timely as it is thrilling to watch. Read full review
88
New York PostV.A. Musetto
Intelligent and tasteful, even while being sexually frank. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneSid Smith
The result is not a movie of peekaboo titillation, but a studied, original portrait of sexuality and its role in human relationships. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley is sensual in escalating degrees of heat, but the film's eroticism, which is substantial, is laid on with a caress. The movie's a slow-motion swoon back into Eden -- a nature documentary about humans -- and it's hypnotic. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A heartbreaking story of true love. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
These are mortal souls and unglamorous bodies and Ferran explores their affair in its earthy, physical and fleshy reality. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
I found the first half-hour a snooze, but once I adjusted to the movie's rhythms, I was completely enraptured. Ferran weaves the love affair into nature, but not in the mystical, sanctified manner of Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain." Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
This is not so much a love story (and even less a story about love) than it is a movie of passionate loveliness. Read full review
80
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
In this film the lovers are seeking the impossible through the possible. The knowledge of that impossibility makes the scenes all the more powerful. This is the core of Lawrence's novel, and Ferran has understood it. Read full review
80
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Director Pascale Ferran makes this a sort of opera of two bodies, as the characters discover not only each other but themselves. And the French filmmaker cannily turns their corporeal discoveries into a moral mission, two desperately lonely souls crying for spiritual freedom in a world of moral constriction. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid Parkinson
Pascale Ferran as the first female director to adapt this notorious novel absorbs her successful vision with a uniquely romantic vibe. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Wragby is a stately manor straight out of English House & Garden, rather than a sprawling, suffocating warren teetering on the edge of a coal pit, and sex is portrayed as a means of personal deliverance rather than a universal salvation, leaving Lawrence's admirers still waiting for the film that will finally do the novel justice. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
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 full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
As the title character in Lady Chatterley, Marina Hands does the most persuasive job of feigning sexual pleasure since Jane Fonda in "Coming Home." Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Being a fairly faithful adaptation, this version also has a lot of that other stuff about the hypocrisy of civilized life, the truthfulness of natural splendor and so forth. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Few films even try to render the full range of emotions and sensations in female sexuality as the aptly titled Lady Chatterley, directed and co-written by a Frenchwoman, Pascale Ferran. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
If a film can be both lush and cold, both erotic and cautious, that film is Lady Chatterley. It's a picture to honor and appreciate, not necessarily to love. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Lady Chatterley is the recipient of six César Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscar. Although the film is capable of sustaining our interest throughout, the viewer may find it lacking in some of the transcendence Lady Chatterley's lust is supposed to inspire. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldMarta Barber
Its candid conversations about sexuality are what places Lawrence's protagonist in a class by herself. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
This might be pleasant to watch, in a floaty '70s-movie kind of way, if not for the film's groaning 168-minute length and abrupt thudder of an ending. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Watching this film I reflected that there are only so many Cracker Jacks you can eat before you decide to hell with the toy. Read full review
More From This Movie

80 Critic Reviews

6.3 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL