Lady Chatterley's Lover - What We Know So Far

Emma Corrin, the Emmy-nominated actor who starred as Princess Diana in the popular Netflix series "The Crown," will be playing yet another English lady — this time, though, instead of playing one married to the royal heir in the second half of the 20th century, they'll play a lady who, in the first half of the century, is married to someone she falls out of love with.

Based on the 1928 novel by prolific author D. H. Lawrence, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" has been the target of multiple adaptations since 1955, with the most recent being a 2015 BBC TV film starring Richard Madden, Holliday Grainger, and James Norton. This upcoming adaptation, directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerrewith and starring Corrin as the adulterous upper-class wife, was announced back in March of 2021. The script is penned by David Magee, a screenwriter who is behind scripts for TV shows and films like "Finding Neverland," "Life of Pi," "Mary Poppins Returns," and the recently released "The School for Good and Evil."

It is fair to start by dispelling a common preconception — and misconception — that many hold when first hearing a summary of the plot. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" does not portray the cheating parties as "bad" and the non-cheating spouses as "good." If it were so simple, it probably wouldn't be remembered as one of D. H. Lawrence's greatest novels. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" tells the story of Constance "Connie" Chatterley, a young woman who is married to Sir Clifford, a wealthy Baronet who has become paralyzed from the waist down due to an injury he suffered during the First World War. Unsatisfied with her marriage, Connie gets into a torrid affair with their lower-class gamekeeper Oliver Mellors, who is also tied to an unhappy relationship of his own. 

The novel can be said to have been ahead of its time for its honest depictions of the sexual experience, especially concerning female sexuality and desire – it was also one of the most targeted by censorship, mainly due to its graphic depictions of sexual content, and the use of some profanities, which were both considered unsuitable for publication at the time. Not only that, but its concern with the problems of class hierarchies, the threat of capitalism and industrialization, and the perils of modern life in the twentieth century also make it a novel endowed with universality and substance.

Produced by Blueprint Pictures' Laurence Mark, Pete Czernin, and Graham Broadbent, with 3000 Pictures' Marisa Paiva and Nikki Cooper as executive producers, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is the second feature-length film from Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, an actor who has graduated to the director's chair.

Despite being set in the 1920s, there are reasons why this story still holds relevance in current times and the director has acknowledged this in multiple interviews. Regarding the film's subject matter and its concern in faithfully portraying romantic intimacy and women's right to sexual liberation, de Clermont-Tonnerre told Vogue: "The idea of a woman being free is still scandalous. You only have to look at what happened with Roe v. Wade, and what's happening now in Iran. This book is about a woman's journey to empowerment, to controlling her body, owning her sexuality, and owning her life. My goal was to emphasize her point of view and to give the audience a visceral experience of a woman experiencing pleasure. It needed to feel accessible."

By now, it should have become unsurprising that "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is rated R. Even though the novel was written in the late 1920s, it did not see widespread publication until decades later, in 1960. Besides the massive storm and controversy that the novel sparked at the time, it was also the target of an obscenity trial in 1959. During the trial, multiple big names in the writing industry were called to the stand as witnesses, this included the likes of E. M. Forster, Rachel Garner, Raymon Williams, and Richard Hoggart. The "not guilty" verdict came in November of the following year, and it not only allowed the book to be published as the author intended, but it also resulted in subsequent less strict parameters by which to judge literary works.

The two main reasons for censoring the novel, besides the unconventional extramarital relationship between a lower-class man and an upper-class woman, were the author's use of expletives and other problematic four-letter words and its graphic depiction of sexual intercourse. We already know that the movie does not hold back on showing skin which Corrin has stated, "It's not something that you should be ashamed about. It's not something that you should deprive yourself of. It's something that we all need."