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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Marina Hands does DH Lawrence. In the same way as Ian Fleming’s James Bond symbolizes a brand of suave, sophisticated British derring-do, the eponymous character of DH Lawrence’s scandalized novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, has become shorthand for transgressive erotica. The book’s infamous 1960 “obscenity trial” and subsequent softcore screen adaptations only fanned these inflamed passions, often missing the deeper connections that Lawrence and his fictional Constance Chatterley sought.The new French version of Lady Chatterley, adapted from a different attempt by Lawrence at the story (entitled John Thomas And Lady Jane), attempts to redress the balance, while keeping its lovers - the young wife of a war-injured (and impotent) upper-class gentleman, plus the earthy estate’s gamekeeper - in various states of undress on their way to sexual and spiritual fulfilment. It’s a tough balancing act, but one that young actress Marina Hands gamely accepted.  “I saw how committed [director] Pascale Ferran was to Lawrence, and she wouldn’t use it to show something she thought was…” Hands pauses, choosing her words carefully. “I mean it’s not about scandal or even sexual scenes. It’s talking about a certain kind of tenderness and kindness in a way that we don’t see very much. There’s a very human journey and I thought this sounds very true.” Much as the fresh-faced, disarmingly charming Hands, 32, daughter of French actress Ludmila Mikael and English stage director Terry Hands, may claim that Lady Chatterley is about more than sex, she’s aware that it’s precisely those intimate scenes that will be hotly anticipated. So how did she and her co-star Jean-Louis Coullo’ch deal with the process of enacting them? “It sounds weird to say, but it was fascinating,” she says. “To be precise. Not to be me, Marina, and Jean-Louis doing the sex scenes and ‘OK, let’s go and improvise’. To be in character, to be this woman who discovers everything. It was difficult to make it sound or look true – because of course we weren’t doing it really!”  She laughs heartily, then switches immediately to a more serious tone. “I remember The Piano – they’re so free at certain moments in the film, they’re not looking at themselves and I thought we really have to achieve this. I thought, ‘Ooh, I really need to see a film like that myself.’ Doing it was very difficult but I’m really happy it exists now.” Ditto the French film industry, who honoured the film with Cesar awards for Best Film and Best Actress for Hands. “Pedro Almodovar gave it to me,” she marvels in genuine delight. “It was such a shock, all these people actually voted for me, saw my name and put a cross…” Just the one X, not the dreaded XXX; perhaps it’s what Lady Chatterley and Marina Hands will now be remembered for.
Leigh Singer
Lady Chatterley, on selected release 24 August 07.
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