Women in Love: A Review

WOMEN IN LOVE

I am unfamiliar with the works of one D.H. Lawrence. Therefore, I cannot offer any views on whether or not the film adaptation of Women in Love is a faithful adaptation. I can offer that the film version is slow, deadly dull and almost insufferably pretentious. Women in Love, I figure, was daring for its time. Now, it is a slog to sit through. 

Sisters Ursula (Jennie Linden) and Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) Brangwen are intelligent and artistic. They are as such, different from most of their community members, who are coal miners. Ursula is a schoolteacher and Gudrun a sculptress. The Brangwen sisters do travel in slightly elevated society circles despite not being either middle or upper class. They soon both become attracted to and are attracted by two distinct men.

School inspector Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) is a somewhat morose fellow, his high intellect more a curse than a blessing. He finds himself drawn to Ursula, who reciprocates the feeling. Rupert's bosom buddy is coal mining heir Gerald Critch (Oliver Reed), who starts eyeing Gudrun. Love, sex and death all start uniting them. Rupert gives up his liaison with wealthy heiress Hermione Roddice (Eleanor Bron), a woman with grand artistic pretensions. A local picnic has the foursome indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. It also ends in tragedy for Gerald's sister and new husband. 

As Rupert & Ursula and Gerald & Gudrun continue their mating dance, they take different approaches. Rupert convinces Gerald to release some of his pent-up anger and frustration with a little nude wrestling. While Rupert does not confess to being in love or desire for Gerald, their physical contact pretty much speaks for itself. Rupert and Ursula decide to get married. Gudrun becomes Gerald's mistress. Both couples, however, are not particularly happy with these arrangements.

A ski trip to Switzerland will have consequences and revelations for our pair of lovebirds. Will Rupert and Ursula find contentment in bourgeois marriage? Will Gerald and Gudrun continue their unhappily unmarried relationship? Will all four couples live to see the end of these Women in Love?  

If people vaguely recall Women in Love, it is due to a few reasons. Women in Love received four Academy Award nominations, winning one. That win is for Glenda Jackson, who won the first of her two Best Actress Academy Awards. It also features full frontal male nudity. That is rather rare nowadays. I figure that in 1970 such a thing was downright scandalous. 

The film may be titled Women in Love, but I would say that it is actually about one man in love with another. The male nude scene where Rupert and Gerald wrestle against each other naked makes Brokeback Mountain look downright virginal in comparison. It is as homoerotic as anything outside an adult film. I will concede that it is beautifully photographed, which explains its Best Cinematography nomination. I can also concede that Larry Kramer's Oscar-nominated screenplay makes it understood that Rupert wanted a romantic/sexual relationship with Gerald. Their wrestling match ends with Rupert running a finger up and down Gerald's arm, as naked a come-on as imaginable (no pun intended).  

I also think that much in Women in Love, the naked romp went on far too long. The audience had already endured a very long and almost pointless ballet scene. I understand that the ballet scene was meant to ridicule Hermione's artistic pretentions. However, it felt much longer and tedious to sit through. It does not help that after this danse erotique, Hermione reacts to being called out for her lack of spontaneity by whacking Rupert with a paperweight. That sequence is topped off with Rupert, stumbling about the forest, stripping off and falling into mud.  

Women in Love is a very long film, running close to two hours and fifteen minutes. I confess to nodding off more than once, never a good sign. I think that for myself, the biggest issue is that Women in Love feels excessively stylized. Again, I figure that such a thing was the intention. We get an early scene where Rupert uses figs to metaphorically discuss sex, particularly deflowering a woman. However, did we really need to see a long scene of Gudrun dancing to a group of cows? I was not sure at times if Women in Love was a drama or a comedy. Again, I put it down to the film's deliberately stylized manner. When, for example, Gerald's father Thomas (Alan Webb) dies, I was reminded of all things The Ruling Class. That film was meant as a comedy. I do not think that Women in Love was. It just played that way.

One can get the symbolism in Women in Love. "She killed him", Gerald says to Rupert when the nude bodies of Gerald's sister Laura (Sharon Gurney) and her luscious and horny husband Tibby (Christopher Gable) are found in the drained lake. She had killed him by pulling him down when she first began to struggle during a skinny dip at the house garden party. However, the entire sequence to me felt a bit like something out of Tom Jones or the aforementioned The Ruling Class. Those, again, were comedies. Was Women in Love also meant as one?  

The performances overall were acceptable. Glenda Jackson, as mentioned, won the first of her two Best Actress Oscars for Women in Love. I am puzzled over what exactly in her performance got her a nomination, let alone the win. Was it a weak year in the Best Actress race? It was not a terrible performance. Gudrun could be blunt with people. Did she win the Oscar for dancing with bulls? At a climactic moment, I was awake enough to shout, "KILL GLENDA JACKSON! PLEASE!", so I suppose that made her interesting to watch if I cared enough to see Gudrun strangled. Again, I do not think it was a terrible performance. It was acceptable. However, I do not think it is memorable or interesting.

The same goes for Jennie Linden as Ursula. She made her character a bit of a dolt. How else to explain why she would be so unaware that Rupert was more into Gerald than into her? I thought better of Alan Bates as Rupert, the barely suppressed gay or bisexual man. He made Rupert's sometimes pompous musings on love and sex believable. Oliver Reed was also better than the material as Gerald, the cold and coldblooded mining tycoon who struggled with human emotion.

Women in Love is not a film that I think is that well-remembered. I found it far too stylized for its own good. Even in long shots, the nude wrestling came across as crazed to almost downright silly. Some editing would have done Women in Love a world of good.   

DECISION: D-