Can a film with an entire scene of full-frontal frolicking in the rain still feel polite? Yes, as it turns out. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the god tier in sexy literary classics, but the sexiest thing in Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s Netflix adaptation are the shots of the English countryside. That surely doesn’t feel right.

Emma Corrin plays posh, yearning Constance Chatterley; Jack O’Connell is Mellors, the gruff gamekeeper who catches her eye after her husband, the upper-class Sir Clifford, is maimed in battle. I so wanted to love this film. A literary period drama? Sexual tension across the class divide? The shadow of war? Wonderful actors? It must be nearly Christmas. But instead of crackling with electricity, it just hums like an energy-efficient light bulb.

Dh Lawrence’s now infamous 1928 novel is about the human spirit recovering from a cataclysmic war. “Ours is essentially a tragic age,...