RUDE AWAKENING
THRILLER IS A TALE OF LUST, JEALOUSY AND REVENGE, BUT IS HELD BACK BY LACK OF CHEMISTRY AND SPARK
It’s hard to compete with a dead woman. The honeymoon is pretty much over for the second Mrs De Winter (Lily James) – and there’s already a world of pain in that job description – from the minute she sets foot on her new husband’s magnificent country estate.
Rebecca’s ghost, of course, haunts every crevice. Fuelling the young woman’s insecurity is her predecessor’s peerless reputation – as horsewoman, hostess and beauty.
It doesn’t help that the awkward, wide-eyed innocent is quite literally out of her class.
Or that the hired help – particularly Maxim De Winter’s malevolent housekeeper Mrs Danvers (played to the hilt by Kristin Scott Thomas) – appears to resent her very presence.
Life at Manderley, then, turns out to be something of a rude awakening for the impressionable orphan who falls head over heels for Armie Hammer’s wealthy widower while holidaying in Monte Carlo as a paid companion to Ann Dowd’s grotesque matron.
And it’s here that this Netflix adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s much-loved novel misses its first beat — confusing Gothic with graphic in the form of dried vomit around the vindictive woman’s mouth.
The contrast between this one-dimensional performance and Dowd’s complex characterisation of evil in The Handmaid’s Tale is particularly stark.
Director Ben Wheatley’s second misstep is casting Hammer in the role of the Maxim de Winter, who was almost a decade older in Du Maurier’s book.
The athletic American is more wooden than brooding and his version of emotionally unavailable comes across as altogether absent.
Rebecca is a rip-roaring tale of lust, jealousy and revenge.
Although it starts out as a girlish infatuation, only obsessive, all-consuming passion can explain the second Mrs De Winter’s character arc.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning 1940 adaptation, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, was hampered by the Hay’s code. What’s Wheatley’s excuse?
The lack of physical chemistry between the two romantic leads suggests a relationship based more on projection than anything else.
This is exacerbated by the title character’s elusive “presence” – turns out, she’s a lot less charismatic in death than she was in life.
Only in the dark dysfunctional relationship between Mrs Danvers and the second Mrs De Winter do we see any real human spark.
Wheatley, best known for experimental independent films such as High-Rise and Kill List, isn’t an obvious fit for this expensive adaptation.
In failing to come to grips with the character’s