Lady Chatterley’s Lover (15, 126 mins)
Valuation: ***
Conclusion: Somewhat tame adaptation
White Noise (12, 136 mins)
Valuation: ***
Verdict: Half way too weird
Film adaptations of famous novels are all the rage this week (see also two versions of A Christmas Carol below).
DH Lawrence’s torrid tale of sex, class and betrayal, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is re-imagined once more, this time with Jack O’Connell in the title role as the lowly-born Mellors and Emma Corrin as Connie, the titled young woman on the other end of her shocking, mutual infatuation.
As far as I know it’s at least the fourth screen version since 1993 when Sean Bean and Joely Richardson lustfully leaned against a tree for four episodes on BBC1. I’m sure there was more to it – but that scene, an unintentionally forceful homage to the hardy English Oak, is all I remember.
Oddly enough, the director of this terribly English tale is a French woman with the stylish name of Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. But then it was another French director, Eva Husson, who last year produced the terrific Mothering Sunday, also set shortly after the First World War and also about lust in England’s class abyss.
DH Lawrence’s torrid tale of sex, class and betrayal, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is re-imagined, this time starring Jack O’Connell (right) in the title role as the lowborn Mellors and Emma Corrin as Connie (left). captioned young woman on the other end of their shocking mutual infatuation
Corrin, as good as young Diana in The Crown, is fully convincing as another posh, unhappy wife whose husband, Sir Clifford (Matthew Duckett), is paralyzed not only by his war injuries but also by societal conventions.
There is a rich literary seam of clandestine affairs in their own language (Madame Bovary, Therese Raquin, etc.) so I don’t know why they feel the need to tackle ours, but on the whole I’m glad they did to have.
In this film, as in Mothering Sunday, both the class differences and the lust feel authentic. Corrin, as good as young Diana in The Crown, is fully convincing as another posh, unhappy wife whose husband, Sir Clifford (Matthew Duckett), is paralyzed not only by his war injuries but also by societal conventions.
Classic film on TV
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have made some wonderful films together, but this poignant war satire is their masterpiece.
Sunday, BBC2, 2pm
Fittingly, she is freed from her cruel trap by the game warden, in which role O’Connell is similarly superb. As the fugitive Paddy Mayne in the brilliant BBC1 series SAS Rogue Heroes, he has a heavy Ulster accent, but here he’s flaunting his native East Midlands working-class vocals, which feels like indulgence. They make plausible illegal lovers.
As for that love affair, much of it takes place outdoors (not very much an East Midlands word) and is properly raunchy but tastefully done, as if it were filmed for a commercial for oversexed naturists.
The story has been muted, however, and that’s not just referring to them doing it in the pouring rain. This Mellors is less a piece of brute and more a piece of semi-smooth reading James Joyce and himself brutally betrayed by a misguided wife. Also, when Connie tells him to be rough on her, he almost gracefully grabs her hair.
Sean Bean was much rougher with Joely Richardson (here ironically cast as Sir Clifford’s sympathetic nurse) 30 years ago, but stories like this have to jibe with modern sensibilities these days; It’s also why Jamie Dornan’s Christian slapped Dakota Johnson’s Anastasia on the butt like he was slapping a sleepy bluebottle in the ghastly Fifty Shades Of Gray (2015).
The other problem with this adaptation stems from David Magee’s script, which attempts to make Connie a feisty champion of the working class – she’s practically Angela Rayner – with Sir Clifford as the embodiment of the cruel, exploitative industrialist.
It doesn’t work, in part because Duckett’s performance as Sir Clifford is a little underwhelming, but perhaps more because Magee, the writer of Finding Neverland (2004), whose final screenplay was Mary Poppins Returns (2018), has an American’s idealized view hat by England and the English.
Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies at a Midwestern university. Both he and his wife Babette (a Greta Gerwig with a flamboyant perm) have been divorced four times, with many children among them and domestic chaos everywhere
Still, there were certainly worse adaptations of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and none quite as pretty to look at – at least until the next one.
I doubt there will be another version of White Noise, Don DeLillo’s acclaimed but challenging 1985 novel, long considered “unfilmable.” Director Noah Baumbach did the best he could.
The book (which I confess to having given up years ago) is a bewildering riot of satire targeting the world of science, rampant information overload, chemical spills (regular occurrences at the time), blended families, drug addiction, death and much more more besides.
Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies at a Midwestern university. Both he and his wife Babette (a Greta Gerwig with a flamboyant perm) have been divorced four times, with many children among them and domestic chaos everywhere.
After a devastating crash involving a tanker and a train, her town falls victim to a “toxic airborne event” that forces everyone to evacuate. Little as DeLillo intended, the parallels to our pandemic-stricken times — panic, hysteria, conspiracy theories, even face masks — are striking.
In any case, there’s a lot to admire in all of this, and a really wonderful moment or two, notably a virtuoso scene where Jack and his colleague, Elvis Presley Studies Professor Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle), compare their subjects (both mom’s sons, both worshiped). through the crowd). It’s priceless, surreally funny. But ultimately, I found White Noise, the film, like the book, just too weird to enjoy with anything like devotion.
Both films are in cinemas. White Noise is also available on Netflix from December 30th, Lady Chatterley’s Lover from today. A longer review by Lady Chatterley ran in October.
also show
Better watch out, Santa’s up for it…
The first few days of December may seem too early for Christmas movies, but our main streets have been decked out with lights for weeks, so maybe we’re fair game.
Not that Violent Night (15, 101 mins, ***) is everyone’s idea of a festive family classic. It starts on Christmas Eve with a couple of whiskey Santas supporting a Bristol bar, one ho-ho-ho-brilliant, the other an alcoholic misanthrope, the latter (David Harbour) being the real Santa.
From there we’re catapulted across the Atlantic, where a top-notch team of murderous thieves invade the well-protected estate of the demonstratively wealthy, mostly obnoxious Lightstone family.
But the attack happens to coincide with Santa’s arrival, and luckily he was a Norse warrior in a past life as he teams up with the only cute family member, little Trudy (Leah Brady) to fight off the really bad guys, follows a mash-up of Die Hard and Home Alone.
Violent Night: It starts on Christmas Eve with a couple of whiskey Santas supporting a Bristol bar, one ho-ho-ho-brilliant, the other an alcoholic misanthrope, the latter (David Harbour, pictured) being the real Santa
The violence that unfolds is cartoonishly brutal, but the screenplay, written by Sonic The Hedgehog writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller, is actually quite funny at times, and there’s a Bad Santa (2003) flavor to it all; Subversive Christmas fun for those who don’t mind bad guys being garlanded with fairy lights.
Needless to say, the arch villain (John Leguizamo) calls himself Mr Scrooge in Violent Night, which brings me (although I wish I didn’t) to the Netflix animation Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (PG, 96 min, **). .
What the Dickens owned Netflix to fund this flimsy musical I can’t imagine, but with Olivia Colman in the cast alongside Jonathan Pryce, Jessie Buckley and Luke Evans in the title role, it can’t have been cheap.
There are a few nice touches, but overall it’s boring, with memorable songs and rather shoddy animation.
Rather than sticking with the lackluster Netflix version and putting up with it, my tip is to re-release The Muppet Christmas Carol (U, 75 mins, *****) on April 30th.