Confined to a wheelchair and impotent, Clifford becomes more distant, and Constance finds comfort in the company of the estate's brooding, lonely gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors (Richard Madden).

[3] In UK newspaper The Guardian, Sam Wollaston wrote of the film's opening scene, "Hang on, what mining disaster at the start of Lady Chatterley's Lover, you might ask, as I did.

It has admittedly been an awful long time since I read it, and then I was probably just skimming for smut (imagine if today's teens got their porn from D. H. Lawrence rather than the internet, they might think sex was something earthy and profound, rather than hairless and mechanical), but I don't remember any accident at a mine.

Wollaston found the adaptation had simplified aspects of social class, before adding, "In other ways, though, Mercurio has made things more complex and interesting: like Sir Clifford Chatterley, not just a silly toff, but a man who had everything struggling to come to terms with becoming disabled.

Overall, he concluded, "But I do think – in spite of the deviation and modernisation – that this is loyal to Lawrence, in its themes of class, the ridiculous social order of things, nature and physical love, and in its language and spirit.

"[4] In The Independent, Amy Burns began by noting: "D. H. Lawrence's tale of Lady Chatterley and her groundskeeper lover is famous for many things – smutty language being perhaps highest on the list.