Netflix's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is Romantic and Feminist

Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre has created a miracle in Netflix’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. She and screenwriter David Magee (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) bring a romantic and feminist perspective to D. H. Lawrence’s troublesome 1929 novel. Leads Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Connie Chatterley and Jack O’Connell (Tulip Fever) as Oliver Mellors perform with conviction and passion, creating great chemistry. The dreamy, reflective nature of their love story is energized by the subplot of social change that, as much as the sex, drives the film and the novel.

The film gives us just enough backstory on the characters. Connie comes from a bohemian background, which included some sexual adventures, and falls in love with Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett, in his first major film role). They marry during World War I, and he returns home wounded but determined to restore his estate and become a writer.

Now relying on a wheelchair, his determination, courage, and his love for his wife, make him a sympathetic character until bitterness and disappointment take over. But now there’s only one problem –– he is impotent and needs an heir. He suggests that Connie seek out a suitable sperm donor, to put it mildly, advising her to think of it as like a visit to the dentist. And also, of course, with the right sort of man, someone discreet and of their social class.