Women in Love (1969)

For decades the British author D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was considered 'The Dirty Book' from the roaring 20's to Mad Men times and beyond this was the book you kept in a brown paper bag and read secretly. My first hand knowledge of Lawerence's work was essentially zero, and given the reputation of the Chatterley book I assumed a certin naughtlness was likely inherent in all of his work. Women in Love is based on the 1920 Lawrence novel of the same name, which in turn is a sequel to his 1915 book The Rainbow which followed three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840's to 1905. The two central characters of Women in Love, sisters Ursula and Gudrun would have been little girls at the end of the first book, here they are women in their 20's, both still living at home, one an teacher one an artist.

Women in Love followes the sisters romances with two best friends, a school inspecter name Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) and the heir to the local coal mine Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed). Urulsa (Jennie Linden) becomes fascinated by Rupert while Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) hooks up wit Gerald. While the film is very sexual and even graphic in subject matter with a fair bit of nudity, its not all about titillation, it's powerful as a character study of very human people, masses of contradictions and mixed motives. Jackson won a best actress Oscar for this and it is deserved, but all four central performances are top notch.

For much of the story nothing much happens, which is fine because the writing and the performances are so good, but there is one moment that really stands out to me. It is the death of some supporting characters, a young couple who drown during a picnic when the sneak off to go skinny dipping. The suddenness of the event, so unexpected, seemingly out of nowhere, it captures so well how those things go. The life altering tragedies are often sudden and unexpected, yet the consequences so permanent. The death of the couple spins the story off into an entirely new direction, things could have been so much different if they hadn't died, and the powerful truth of this in emblematic of a film and story that is consistently profound in its plummeting of the experience of living. A very fine work indeed. ****