My Cousin Rachel: A period thriller about sex, power, mystery

The first words of the film: Did she? Didn’t she? And thus the mystery begins.

Just in time for summer when the temperature outside is blazing, we can escape to the movies for My Cousin Rachel, a cool but turgid piece of pulp fiction; classy for sure, but essentially pulp. No more. No less. No apologies.

In a testament to the vitality and intrigue of the original 1951 book, Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel has had several incarnations: 1952 film starring Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland, BBC television adaptation, radio play, stage play and now this latest foray into Rachel’s innocent and/or conniving ways. 

Philip (Sam Claflin), a young impressionable Englishman, plots revenge against his exotic and beautiful cousin Rachel (Rachel Wiesz), believing that she murdered his older cousin-guardian Ambrose (also played by Sam Claflin). Philip expresses his fears to his godfather Nick Kendall (Iain Glen) and his daughter Louise (Holliday Grainger), who has her own eyes set on Philip. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling helplessly and obsessively in love with Rachel. Such feelings are not necessarily reciprocated. Or are they?

When Rachel arrives from Italy to the Cornish estate, both remark how much the younger man resembles her dead husband. That seems to excite both of them. Having a charming tea-with-sandwich session, Rachel notices butter dripping from Philip’s fingers, suggesting “You’d better lick your fingers.” This is either concerned mothering or high-toned cock teasing. Or both. For the record, in the book, du Maurier wrote “You’d better suck your fingers.” The widow is weaving a web. Or is she?

At one time Philip is convinced she is a cold-blooded killer maneuvering her way into an inheritance. Though there are enough seeds of doubt here to grow a lush garden of disbelief, he momentarily tamps down his suspicions. His innocence and inexperience see gold, not gold digging. Or does he? 

His youthful gushiness alternately appeals and disgusts her. Or does it? At one point, to his face, she says, “How can I live with a boy, no matter how lovely a glorious puppy he is, his wet nose always looking for its mother?”  Talk about a splash of detumescent cold water from his MILF.

His obsession really becomes madness as he tries to convince her in a Romeo-climb up the garden wall to her window, then later ransacks her room for truth, saving evidence that he then burns, finally suggesting a potentially perilous cliffside ride home. Culpable? Or not?

On one level, it’s a period/costume thriller, with lots of waistcoats and capes and bodices to be ripped, a femme fatale in widow’s weeds, considerable yammering about family estates, country farming with ploughs and scythes, sweeping overhead views of horses thundering down a quintessential English seaside. For sure, this is all the well-traveled territory of Masterpiece Theatre.

But director and writer Roger Michell has taken this familiar story and darkened it a bit, giving 21st century sensibilities to the 19th-century setting. It really does become a psychological thriller about a mysterious outsider who upsets the delicate balance of this household largely occupied by men, dogs and mud. It becomes a story of romantic love, infatuation, and powerful women who take unapologetic pleasure in their own sexuality. 

Jane Austen, meet Dr. Freud, Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz.

It’s a potboiler plot filled with stuffy interiors, craggy Cornwall cliff exteriors with an excursion to the terra cotta hills of Tuscany and the magical cityscape of Florence, a film that’s equal parts period piece (early Victorian), costume drama, murder mystery, romance, and thriller. Let’s throw in some risky puppy love, then cousin-love, sloppy sex in the bed of bluebells, wills altered against the lawyer’s advice, and hallucinogenic herbal tea (“twig soup” the manservant calls it). Add a transgressive woman who refuses to be owned like property.

That’s a whole lot of turgidity going on.

The pot is boiling at high alert, and we have to wonder if the herbal tea Rachel concocts is to kill or to heal. It's classic du Maurier — suspense and tension among the beautiful people in beautiful places — with just enough hints laced with foreboding and ominous signs veiled with malice to convince us we might have it figured out. But still the same questions remain at the end the film: Did she? Didn’t she?

The only spoiler alert I need give here is to let you know that you will not figure it out.

You will find these unanswered questions — all these dropped clues then rescinded — either tortuous or terrific, maddening or mesmerizing. Which is your preferred cup of tea, camomile or Darjeeling?

Still, you will marvel at the performances of Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin. If, if, the swirling thriller is occasionally elevated to art, it’s due to the genuine mystery — chemical, biological, psychological — at work between Rachel and Philip, and Claflin and Weisz, especially Weisz, convey this mystery with mastery. 

We are tormented by their lack of answers. There is no ambiguity about that at all.

This article appears in Jun 8-15, 2017.