He’s let her wrap him “around her little finger,” but only we in the audience and his godfather’s daughter ( Holliday Grainger) see that.īut not Philip. His advisers’ raised eyebrows and her testy protests of the “shame” his attentions bring her are to no avail. Philip and seemingly every other man within her reach is instantly smitten.Īnd he impulsively starts trying to set her up for life, ease her pain and give her a rightful inheritance. She is sad, lightly flirtatious, delicate, cries easily. It turns out, she never changed Ambrose’s will. To his godfather ( Iain Glen) back in Cornwall, Philip threatens his revenge, “in full measure,” upon this femme fatale. The new college graduate is enraged, threatening the widow’s poncy Italian lawyer when the man insists Ambrose died of a brain tumor. And as those letters turn paranoid and accusatory, Philip dashes to Italy to save Ambrose, only to arrive too late. Much of this played out in letters to his young ward, Philip. Cousin Ambrose took sick, went to Italy for the cure, met a charming widow, married her, got ill again and died. That’s the mystery facing young Philip Ashley (Claflin, of “Me Before You”) as he tries to piece together what happened to his late cousin and guardian, the man who left him a vast Cornish estate in late 18th century Cornwall.

So no matter how often Rachel (Oscar winner Rachel Weisz) turns on the tears, how sinister her every offered “Cup of tea?” seems, no matter how paranoid the letters from her late husband, read by his enraged cousin ( Sam Claflin), alleging a marriage to a spendthrift that has become a deadly trap, keep your smug “Oh she DID it,” to yourself. Hitchcock filmed her romantic mysteries “The Birds, ” “Jamaica Inn” and most famously “Rebecca,” and the thing that made the filmmaker and the writer so hand-in-glove was their shared love for surprise twists. They’re both ancient history, at least in the pop culture sense, but it’s helpful to remember that Daphne du Maurier was Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite novelist when you’re watching “My Cousin Rachel.”

My cousin rachel book review