Netflix’s ‘ Rebecca’ remake is pretty ... unnecessary
“Rebecca” does a competent job of remaking a classic film that wasn’t exactly screaming for it.
But here one is anyway, arriving on Netflix on Oct. 21, another take on Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance novel adapted in various forms before, most famously the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. It was Hitchcock’s first American project and the only one of his movies to win an Oscar for best picture. So, you know, pedigree.
There’s no harm in a remake of any movie, particularly one that’s 80 years old. It should, however, have a reason for being, some kind of updated sensi
bility that makes it a companion piece. Otherwise the new one will just become a forgettable footnote — if not a punch line.
Lily James stars in this ‘Rebecca’ remake for Netflix
The latter shouldn’t be the case with director Ben Wheatley’s film. It never really moves the viewer to such a strong reaction. It doesn’t plod along, exactly, and there are a couple good performances, one particularly savory, and it’s gorgeous looking, in a glossy travel-and-fashion kind of way.
Lily James plays the narrator, who famously doesn’t get a first name. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” she says at the start, repeating the famous first line of the novel. First stop, though, is Monte Carlo, where she’s working as a put-upon sort of assistant to ugly American Mrs. Van Hopper (Ann Dowd, born for this kind of role).
She meets Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), a rich Brit on holiday while grieving his recently deceased wife. A good bit of the film is spent on burgeoning romance — zipping around in his convertible, oysters for breakfast, trysts on the beach and all that. Soon Maxim is asking her to marry him and return to his ancestral home of Manderley. Once there the new Mrs. de Winter meets the staff, including the imposing Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas), who maintains an unusually strong loyalty to the first Mrs. Danvers — Rebecca.
Rebecca haunts the place, if not quite literally, then certainly in her stillcommanding presence.
Mrs. de Winter will find adapting to her new life more difficult than she realized, thanks in part, though not completely, to Mrs. Danvers. There are secrets piled on top of secrets. If you aren’t familiar with the story, to reveal more would be unfair. But it’s OK to say that there are reasons for Maxim’s mood swings, his sleepwalking, his unwillingness to discuss Rebecca.
And they may not be what you think.
How Kristin Scott Thomas steals the movie as Mrs. Danvers
For all this to work effectively the film has to create a sense of longing and dread, evidently a tricky combo. Scott Thomas is fantastically curdled as the scheming Mrs. Danvers, her withering gaze and dismissive attitude always at the ready. (One delightful put-down: When Mrs. Danvers says Manderley probably runs the same way Mrs. de Winter’s other houses have, a gaping Mrs. de Winter says she’s never seen anything like the place. “Oh,” Mrs. Danvers says. “I’m sorry, I thought you’d been a lady’s maid.”)
James charts Mrs. de Winter’s transition from wide-eyed innocent to worthy adversary to co-conspirator effectively, if at times somewhat inconsistently (though that’s a function of the script, not the acting). But beyond her performance and Scott Thomas’, the rest are pretty mundane. Hammer has no problem playing a man of privilege. Making him an interesting man of privilege proves a tougher assignment.
And for all the beauty Wheatley puts on the screen, the story just doesn’t grab you the way it should.
“We can never go back to Manderley again, that much is certain,” Fontaine’s Mrs. de Winter says in the original film.
Who are we to argue?