MY COUSIN RACHEL
Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin, Holliday Grainger, Iain Glen Beautiful. Charming. Possibly murderous. Oh, well, you can’t have everything. IT’S disorienting and frustrating when a star’s performance is deeper, smarter and frankly better than the movie around it — while the quality of the actor’s work compels the viewer to keep watching, there’s a desire that the rest of the movie would keep pace with its lead.
I found this to be the case with My Cousin Rachel, Notting Hill director Roger Michell’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s classic romantic mystery.
Michell’s film is far from a disaster — it makes good use of some fine actors and beautiful locations, and hints at some fascinating dramatic complexities — but it has a strange, overwrought energy, like it’s being torn in two different directions.
Oscar-winning UK actor Rachel Weisz has long combined charisma and subtlety to excellent effect, making her characters interesting, fully-rounded individuals without showily displaying it.
And that happens here as well — Weisz’s title character, Rachel, gradually casts a spell over the other characters, and the audience, until her actions, her motivations and her fate become the focus of all attention.
Considering she doesn’t appear onscreen until the end of the first act, it’s a pretty impressive feat of scenestealing.
At the beginning, the focus is on Philip (Sam Claflin from Me Before You), orphaned at a young age and raised by his bachelor cousin Ambrose, the owner of a rural property.
Years pass, and Ambrose takes ill and relocates to Italy for his health, where he meets and falls in love with his cousin, Rachel.
But the letters Ambrose regularly sends Philip soon take a darker tone — he fears the woman he fell for is manipulative, even dangerous.
When Ambrose dies, his estate is left to Philip, who is naive in the ways of the world, heartbroken over his guardian’s death and suspicious of Rachel.
Then Rachel arrives in England, and it’s difficult for Philip to hold a grudge against a woman who combines a beguiling charm and candour with a genuine sorrow over the loss of the man she loved.
The smitten Philip is happy to ensure Rachel wants for nothing, handing over more and more of his inheritance. But is he being played for a fool?
Credit to Claflin for not soft-pedalling his character’s wilfulness and foolishness, and even if Phillip’s not the target of a sinister plot, he could be seen as his own worst enemy at times. But the film overplays that, possibly to keep the audience in two minds about what Rachel has in mind.
It’s an admirable enough move on My Cousin Rachel’s part but Michell’s misjudged handle on the tone of the piece means it’s more muddled than mysterious.