Metacritic reviews

Often draped over each other like a pair of gorgeous statues, O’Donnell and Corrin strike palpable chemistry throughout, selling both their desire for one another and the consequent love born out of it believably.

An unabashedly heady romance, rich in pretty costumes — when they're wearing them — and lush, lusty atmosphere.

You feel you are running alongside the characters, trying to catch up with them on their journeys forward.

Even as she preserves the essential particulars of an oft-told story, de Clermont-Tonnerre draws out Lawrence’s feminism and class rage with a welcome forthrightness that occasionally translates into some overly emphatic dialogue. But as in any decent reimagining of this story, the emotional and sensual force of the central romance renders language irrelevant, body language excepted.

Unfortunately, Lady Chatterley’s Lover circa 2022 fails to deliver the degree of bodice-ripping drama for which D.H. Lawrence adaptations are well known.

Despite the stars’ strong performances and the high level of craft, the film struggles in its final act.

Magee’s script doesn’t always give them enough material to play with, but Corrin runs with it and, most impressively, with a freedom that totally clicks with de Clermont-Tonnerre’s sensibilities. And yet, when the credits roll it feels like something is missing and, well, you somehow wish they’d pushed it even more.

In the end, the couple’s chemistry is off the charts, and that’s all that matters — though there’s still a too-tasteful David Hamilton-like quality to it all.

Clermont-Tonnerre’s emphasis on playfulness and energy is understandable, but an opportunity to bring back a layered epicness to sex on film feels lost.

However faithfully the film transposes the plot and themes of the source material, it struggles to capture the spirit, ironing out D.H. Lawrence’s modernity-skeptical modernism and losing sight of his poetic vision.