While attending a wedding that ends in tragedy, sisters Gudrun and Ursula meet lifelong friends Rupert and Gerald. Rupert and Ursula soon marry, while Gurdrun and Gerald have an affair. The foursome head to Switzerland on holiday, where there relationships take markedly different and unexpected directions. Ken Russell's drama, based on DH Lawrence's novel, starring Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden.

Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920s English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.