Return to Innocence
As a result of the 1960 prosecution, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is wedded to the word ‘obscenity’ in the popular imagination. Carol Murphy talks to Pascale Ferran, whose new film and television adaptation seeks to return to the joyous awakening that is at the heart of the story.

Pascale Ferran, French director of Camera d’Or winner Coming to Terms with the Dead (1994), could be described as the polar opposite to Ken Russell. Her feature-length representation of the second version of D.H. Lawrence’s sexually explicit novel, commonly known as Lady Chatterley’s Lover (written in 1928 and banned in the UK until 1960) strips the plot of any controversy and offers the viewer a heartfelt, joyous, meticulously detailed, childlike, and utterly earnest interpretation of the story which she describes as the greatest love story ever written. Lack of irony is certainly not a contemporary or fashionable trait, and it cuts close to the comedy bone in scenes where we see the lovers for example decorate each other with flowers or run naked together through the rain. However, it is a refreshing approach to a love story where the sex scenes push the narrative forward.

Lady Chatterley is the story of an affair between the aristocratic Lady Constance, married to a former Lieutenant from World War I condemned to living the rest of his life in a wheelchair, and her taciturn gamekeeper Parkin.

What attracted you to the book initially and what made you think ‘I want to make a film out of this?’

Many things. There are three things that I would want to single out, but two of them were already linked to deep and already old desires that I have of cinema. The first is that 10 years ago I was already trying to get an original script that would deal with the relationship of a couple in a physical, carnal relationship which would be everything. The sex scenes would make the story move forward. So I wanted to attempt to offer a representation of these sex scenes that would be different from what we are used to seeing on screen. The second thing is that I wanted to film nature and the seasons going by. Over the last 15 to 20 years I have developed this passion for gardening. The relationship one has with material, with earth and time and the changing of things and the smell and the very sensual relationship with Botanical things has opened up new horizons for me. So I had this wish of finding a film project that would enable me to link these elements. And to finish came the book. It was very much the first time I encountered myself with an author who took so much time to tell me the story with so much minute, in-depth detail.

So did you ever feel that you wanted to describe everything that you have spoken using an original script, perhaps written by you, rather than using a book? Also, did you feel that you hadn’t experienced those things in any other visual representation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover?

I have seen no other adaptation of Lady Chatterley on screen, and I have always heard that they weren’t that good. But above all I was really in a very new and exclusive and rapport with the book, and I really wanted to try to transfer that to the screen. When you speak of an original script you obviously write taking information from your own life. When you are dealing with such an intimate subject as sexuality, you very quickly have the impression that, if you are using your own life, it is too subjective and it doesn’t enable you to completely open up. I had the feeling that by appropriating Lawrence’s text I would be able to really unveil and open up much more myself through his text. The period also helped the whole opening up and unveiling and peeling off the layers, because the more the lovers got into their relationship then the more they peeled off their layers. It was something that we couldn’t have transposed to a contemporary time.

Did you always intend to make two versions of the film, one for television and the other for the big screen?

Yes – in fact the first thing I did was to go to Pierre Chevalier (head of the small French television channel ARTE’s fiction unit). I needed to find someone who understood completely why I wanted to adapt this book. After all, it’s a masterpiece and also a work of erotic literature, which makes it very daunting, and you have to ask yourself whether you’re going to be up to it. So I went to see Pierre Chevalier and told him about the project, and he welcomed it with open arms. That was the decisive point from which everything else followed. His support was like an instant confirmation to me that I was doing the right thing, and he also allowed me the creative freedom necessary to make the film without any intervention, even in the casting process. ARTE became the project’s first commercial backer.

After that, Gilles Sandoz (the executive producer) and I quickly decided that we wanted to make two separate versions, a long one – in two parts – for television, and a shorter feature length-film for the cinema. It was impossible to finance the whole project with one sole backer, both in terms of the actual production costs and for creative reasons relating to the cinematic medium. The film is about a transformation: it’s a story told in intimate detail of the experiences and emotional states of mind Constance goes through which lead to this transformation. The feature-length format offered me the opportunity to track this transformation in real time – pure magic.

Your adaptation seems quite different from the scandalous, controversial image the novel conjures up for those who haven’t read it.

Yes, but I should point out straight away that the novel’s colourful reputation belies its content.

When Lawrence wrote it eighty years ago, he was going against his time – this was England in the 1920s – and in opposition to the prudish mores of society. He wanted to put sexuality back where he believed it belonged, that is as an integral part of a loving relationship and not something to be ashamed of. But his intimate love scenes were accused of obscenity. Nowadays, this is still the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Lady Chatterley – the controversy which surrounded it.

However, this is the 21st century. Sexuality is well and truly out in the open, in fact it is a commodity, which is on sale pretty much everywhere. Ironically, probably one of the least controversial things you could do with this novel today is make a porn movie about an aristocrat and her gamekeeper.

What’s interesting is that when I first decided to adapt the novel, I also got the feeling that I was going against my time, producing something in direct opposition to the two ‘accepted’ ways of representing sex in the movies: in the first (which now seems old-fashioned, almost obsolete), as soon as the two lovers jump into bed, the film changes tack abruptly, you get music, soft focus and it suddenly cuts to the next scene; while in the second, more ‘modern’ approach, everything happens with cold detachment, there is no insight into the characters’ thoughts or emotions, and sex is portrayed as a base animalistic instinct, where only the bodies ‘speak’ and human desire becomes a form of expression cut off from everything else.

But lust does play a big part at the start of the affair between Constance and Parkin.

Of course, but let’s be clear about this: I’ve got nothing against lust; in fact I think lust makes the world go round. However, I’m not interested in showing pure sexual desire devoid of any emotion, because for me it’s a fallacy. In Lawrence’s work, even when sexual desire (apparently) finds its simplest form of expression, there is always something else going on underneath it all, something more complex. The beauty of Lawrence’s book, and its profound modernity, lies in the way it considers the body above all else; the body is set in contrast to the social codes and identity which constrain it. But he doesn’t represent the body in isolation from the characters and their emotions.

Lady Chatterley is also the simple tale of two lonely people who come together, two people trapped in the identities which have been imposed on them and which weigh heavily on both of them. Their love affair liberates them from these identities and they find common ground in which to reinvent themselves: they thus regain their freedom, their ability to act independently, and their happiness; three elements which, according to Spinoza, combine as one.

There are six sex scenes in the film. Were you ever afraid of repeating yourself?

No, although I was scared of failing, of course. But if you set out with the belief that each one of those scenes is integral to the narrative and helps construct the story – since each new sexual encounter is a new experience for Constance – there is no reason to feel that you are repeating yourself. Each episode is very different, and therefore so is their dramatic treatment. The sex scenes punctuate the film, and slowly but surely lead the two characters towards freedom, both in a general sense and also in particular from the alienation they are suffering from at the start of the film.

How did you cast the actors who play the lovers?

I had to work within certain boundaries, that is, the characters’ physical appearances. For me it was essential that the bodies of the actors reflected their characters’ different social class.

I’d been aware of Marina Hands for quite some time, and knew she was an exceptional young talent, one of a handful of actresses who came to mind every now and then during the writing process. When I finally met her, something very rare happened, kind of like a thunderbolt. She immediately clicked with me and the project. It was absolutely imperative that the actress whom I chose to play Constance was able to connect on a deep level with the idea of the film we were about to make. It is an exhausting role which demands total immersion for months on end, and this is impossible unless the actress shares the same desire to tell the story as the director, and unless the two have complete mutual trust in one another.

We did a few screen tests and I soon realised that it could only be Marina. She has an incredible romantic quality about her, and at the same time, a boldness, a bravura, and an amazing appetite for hard work.

For Parkin I was looking for an unknown actor, because I wanted him to make the same dramatic impact on the screen as he made in Constance’s life. He needed to have an old-fashioned, down-to-earth physique, a body which demonstrated the character’s primal relationship with nature. It was Sarah Teper (one of the two casting directors) who first told me about Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, whom she had seen in various theatrical productions. With him, things took a bit longer. He had come to acting relatively late and had very little experience of filming, and this is an extremely difficult role if you are inexperienced. But we worked intensively together to prepare the part, and as we were shooting the film within a real time frame, he opened up more and more during the course of the filming, just like Parkin himself in fact, which was fantastic to see.

I haven’t seen for such a long time such an earnest joyous childlike film. Your decision not to have any irony is an incredible and positive thing. Do you worry about the earnestness and lack of irony?

First of all, thank you very much for the compliment. I don’t like irony. I do appreciate humour and freedom and joy, but not humour with sarcasm. For me irony implies a certain superiority and judgement which I don’t feel I have at all. I feel at exactly the same level as my characters. I think it could have scared other people being so much at face value in terms of the innocence and risked falling into ridicule but it is a fear that I have never had. When I read the most famous scenes, when Constance runs naked in the rain and then when they decorate their bodies with the flowers, it was so sublime, it was so beautiful. So for me it really has to be at that level of direct face value so that it borders on ridicule for it to work.

You obviously also deal with class, social status and hierarchy in terms of Constance and Parkin’s sexual relationship.

I think there is a whole game in the book, as well as in the film, on domination. For example, if you look at the level of culture and speech, Constance is the dominant one. But on an intimate level Parkin would be the dominant person. Throughout the film the balance goes from one to the other in terms of the positions changing. Little by little they find each other and get rid of all those labels and baggage that they have – be it her position as an aristocrat or his position as a gamekeeper and servant, or her position as a submissive wife and his position as a dominating male at that time. And that is why when I read this book I had this very strong impression that it was the most beautiful love story that had ever been told.

In the latter stages of the film the film language starts to become more self-conscious – for example the super 8 film of Constance going on holiday, the use of the voice of a reader or narrator, the character of Mrs Bolton talking directly to the camera, etc. Why did you decide to use this kind of approach at the end of the film?

For the freedom. Constance frees herself so the film becomes free too.

Lady Chatterley won the César for Best Film, Best Actress, Best Adaptation, Best Cinematography, and Best Costumes.