Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Films of the week
MY COUSIN RACHEL
(2017) 12 ◆ Wednesday, 9pm, Film4 ★★★★ Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel is adapted here, preserving the novel’s extraordinary guile, ambiguity and sensuality. Philip (Sam Claflin) is a wealthy young heir, living in his older cousin Ambrose’s grand Cornish estate. Philip lacks experience of the world, and certainly of women, so when Ambrose dies shortly after he unexpectedly marries in Florence, Philip prepares to give the widow Rachel (Rachel Weisz, above with Claflin) a cool welcome. But when she arrives, Philip finds himself slowly entranced by Rachel, a woman supremely in command of herself, and of her power to manipulate and seduce – and also a woman whose motives and desires are exceedingly hard to read, least of all by naive young Philip.
MOVE OVER, DARLING
(1963) U ● Saturday, 3pm, BBC2 ★★★★ Showing before a new episode of Talking Pictures on romcoms (at 4.40pm), here’s a romantic comedy with a twist. Doris Day’s girl next door image was one she used to her advantage in a series of 1960s sex comedies (where sex may happen, but can’t be seen or heard), usually paired with Rock Hudson (see Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back). Here, she is absent wife Ellen Arden, returning after five years stranded on a desert island to find that her husband, Nick (James Garner, above, with Day), has remarried. She’s put out that he’s been dating Polly Bergen’s bombshell while she’s been gone – but he’s not the only one. Reconciliation is put on hold when Mr Arden sees whom Mrs Arden has been sharing a fig leaf with on that island – it’s hunky Chuck Connors...