Pageant
Screened Thursday, October 16, 2008
Synopsis
Director/co-writer Pascale Ferran brings a unique mixture of frank sexuality and lyrical aesthetics to D.H. Lawrence’s celebrated and subversive love story. Lady Chatterley (Marina Hands) is a repressed young woman married to a lieutenant (Hippolyte Girardot) paralyzed from the waist down after being wounded in WWI. After accidentally glimpsing the naked back of burly gamekeeper Oliver Parkin (Jean Louis Coulloc’h), she begins a series of daily visits to the beautiful environs of his wooden cabin. Surrounded by lush flora, the two lovers re-awaken each other’s desire for life. D.H. Lawrence wrote three versions of his then controversial novel; Pascal Ferran’s film is an adaptation of the second, published in French under the title Lady Chatterley and I’homme des bois and in English as John Thomas and Lady Jane. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times acclaimed Ms. Ferran’s version “the most frankly sensual movie in memory.” Winner of Five Cesar Awards, including Best Film and Best Actress.
In French with English subtitles.
