Despite being resoundingly panned by critics, Netflix’s relentlessly horny film trilogy 365 Days and throbbing smash hit series Sex/Life drew in monstrous viewership figures, and we can hazard a guess as to why. If we extrapolate the data, we can infer that subscribers can’t resist the lure of titillating original content, with Lady Chatterley’s Lover providing the latest evidence.
One major difference is that critics seem to be the only ones who haven’t given director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s latest a right good pounding, with the literary adaptation boasting a rock hard Rotten Tomatoes score of 85 percent to complement its near-identical 86 percent user rating.
The feature-length retelling of a novel written in the late 1920s doesn’t exactly seem like the sort of thing that would get audiences hot under the collar, but we’d be remiss to question just how many projects of a similar ilk feature angry lovemaking on the forest floor, frisky frolics in a meadow, and the old chestnut of saying goodbye forever through the means of sensuous doggy.
It’s also a moving and intimate portrait of one woman’s sexual awakening in the face of personal tragedy and the weight of expectations that come with being part of the landed gentry, but it’s a lot easier for the marketing team and social media gurus to focus on the more salacious aspects of the story.
To be fair, it has worked a treat, with FlixPatrol naming Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a Top 10 hit in no less than 89 countries since being added to the library, even if it mirrored its main character by coming second as always, this time behind effects-heavy creature feature Troll.
