‘Rachel’ casts dark, beguiling spell
Modern-day audiences may find writer-director Roger Michell’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel “My Cousin Rachel” — previously made in 1952 with Olivia de Havilland and a young Richard Burton — a tad dated and retrograde with its witchy seductress, femme fatale and anti-heroine leading an arguably innocent and besotted young man to rack and ruin, not to mention debauchery and, perhaps, even incest among Cornwall’s bluebells.
But with its black comic touches and various winks at those in the know, it is also a kind of sexual adventure as well as an exploration of our ambivalent feelings about leading lady Rachel Weisz. Almost 20 years after seeing her onscreen in “The Mummy,” then in “About a Boy,” “Constantine” and “A Constant Gardener,” we remain in her thrall. In this new film, we don’t meet Cousin Rachel until well into the running time, although we hear the word “witch” whispered softly at her image.
Sam Claflin’s orphan Philip was raised on the Ashley Estate, a dark stretch of the misty Cornish countryside owned by his much older cousin and surrogate father Ambrose. At some point Ambrose sails to Florence for the climate, while Philip remains the master of the manor and a delight to its tenants and other workers with the help of Louise Kendall (Holliday Grainger) and her father, Nick Kendall (Iain Glen).
Philip receives letters from Florence in which Ambrose describes meeting their cousin Rachel there and what a wonderful, sweet person she is. But the letters take a turn in tone. It appears Ambrose and Rachel have fallen in love and married, giving her a claim on Ashley if Ambrose should die. He does.
Nick Kendall knocks down any claims Rachel can make after Ambrose dies, and Philip travels to Florence to find his remains and instead finds a strange Italian man (Pierfrancesco Favino) in Ambrose’s living quarters sans Rachel, who has left.
Philip is furious and full of suspicion, which Louise, who is obviously in love with him and would give him a fine life, shares. But slowly after Cousin Rachel’s return to Ashley, Philip begins to act as a man under a love spell. So is Rachel evil? Or is she trying to keep her legal hold on a property that is hers through marriage? Or is the marriage, even both marriages, an evil plot she uses to get the estate?
(“My Cousin Rachel” contains a sexually suggestive scene and violence.)