“Lady Chatterley”, a steamy but critically acclaimed version of D.H. Lawrence’s classic novel of passion and deception, won the best film and four other top prizes at France’s Cesars film awards yesterday.
The film, directed by Pascal Ferran beat the main favourite, World War II saga “Indigenes” (“Days of Glory”), to take the premier award for best picture as well as picking up Best Actress for Marina Hands. Ferran’s film also won awards for best adaption, best costume and best photography.
Ferran told of the onerous cost of making only her third movie – and her first in 11 years.
“I don’t know if I should say that but at the end of the film we were so ruined that we could not even have a party worthy of the name, so I would like to ask all the technicians and artists to come on stage because the party is now!,” she said.Several film versions have been made of Lawrence’s story of an affair between Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper. The explicit language and sex scenes caused a sensation when published in Britain in 1960, resulting in Penguin Books being taken to court in a much-publicised obscenity trial.
While some of the movie versions have been ridiculed by critics, Le Monde newspaper said Ferran’s version – taken from a second version of the novel that Lawrence wrote – was full of “primitive and sensual beauty“.
