Lady Chatterley Isn’t Sexy

It is over 90 years since D.H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and 60 since it unleashed our grandparents’ libidos. Now, apparently, the rest of us need to watch it for the same treatment. This at least is the tacit argument of the new Netflix adaptation, and the sell of its director. “We are still living with puritanism,” she says, telling instead a remedial story of “celebrating sexuality”, of “a woman who takes ownership of her body”, a sensual interpretation of the novel which has “never been done”.