Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel tells the story of Philip Ashley, a young Englishman who plots revenge against his mysterious and beautiful cousin, believing that she murdered his guardian. His feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling helplessly and obsessively in love with her.
Du Maurier’s works are no stranger to the big screen. Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock adapted three of her novels – Jamaica Inn, The Birds and Rebecca – while the film rights for My Cousin Rachel were bought almost immediately, with the 1952 version starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton coming just two years after the book’s publication.
Director Roger Michell has written a fresh adaptation of his own, inspired by the novel’s thrilling ambiguity, the spell of which du Maurier never breaks as the search for the truth unfolds.
“I think if you absolutely know one way or the other what Rachel has done, the story doesn’t work,” says Michell. “It’s exciting to make a film where part of the fun is knowing that people will leave the theatre debating… did she or didn’t she?
“I hope people love the mystery of that as much as I do. And I hope they enjoy going on a rollercoaster ride with this ill-matched couple who are thrown into a kind of emotional washing machine and find themselves churned about as they try to puzzle out each other’s motives, assumptions, values, and each other’s sense of truth.”
That sense of mystery was alluring for the film’s star Rachel Weisz. The actress recalls that once she read the script she called Michell to ask him whether Rachel (the character) was innocent or not.
It’s exciting to make a film where part of the fun is knowing that people will leave the theatre debating… did she or didn’t she
“His answer was galvanizing,” she says. “Roger told me he didn’t know and he didn’t want to know for sure. I thought that would be very exciting to explore and it made me really want to do this project.”
Michell is full of praise for his leading lady. “Rachel was able to bring a haunting quality to the story, which is really the key to the whole film… In one moment she’s charming, and in the next she’s furious but still seems as if she is hiding something. Every one of those moments is played with conviction,” says Michell.
Weisz embraced both the light and dark facets of her character equally. Rachel is a woman who arrives in England having just lost her husband. She goes to his farm that he had told her all about, and there she meets this young handsome man “and at first, there’s something quite magical about it all,” she remarks.
This young and handsome man is played by Sam Claflin. To play the part of Philip, Michell wanted someone who could traverse seamlessly from vengefulness to romantic ecstasy to the most doubt-ridden torment. “We watched a lot of films, and Sam Claflin just popped out as exceptionally appropriate,” says Michell. “We asked him to do a couple of screen tests and he was incredibly persuasive. He’s sensitive, he’s smart, but he’s also youthful and vigorous. He’s got the lot.”
As a sheltered orphan most of his life, with no mother or sisters to guide him, Philip Ashley is a man with little experience with women when he meets Cousin Rachel. He’s lived a life of isolation, and though he initially intends to seek retribution against Rachel, she instead ignites in him a longing he’s never even known possible, a longing so intense he then becomes unsure he can trust it.
Claflin, whose star is inexorably on the rise, found the character full of fascination. “I’ve loved playing Philip and entering his very ambiguous world. Initially, Philip suspects Rachel of foul play, and he comes in with a lot of judgement against her,” says Claflin; adding that “he’s made his mind up that he despises her before he even meets her. But he’s slowly bewitched by her, due to her mysterious nature, and because she’s different to any of the women that he knows, though he doesn’t know many women at all. Soon, she has this incredible intriguing hold over him.”
Du Maurier’s granddaughter Grace Browning hopes that this new screen version will reintroduce the pleasures of the author to some and bring her books to a new generation.
“I think there’s much more depth to her writing than many people initially think. Her common themes are jealousy, deception, the motivation of people and her characters,” says Browning. “They are human themes that are always relevant and I think that’s why people keep reading her work.”