It's not every day that a great performer named Rachel actually ends up playing the titular character of a movie called My Cousin Rachel, but alas, that is exactly what we get in this British adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's 1951 novel of the same name. Rachel Weisz, that underrated actress whose range is as vast as her timeless elegance, here portrays a woman who, after the death of her husband Ambrose, begins to wrap the deceased's cousin, Philip (Sam Claflin), around her finger to such an extent that the young man's initial loathing of her turns into infatuation that he can not shake off. Falling head over heels and even giving over his entire inheritance to her, he notices changes in Rachel's behavior and attitude that would suggest she's played him like the most gullible of fools.
Is Rachel a clever opportunist, or a woman whose charm is merely circumstantial, a spell she casts incidentally on the naive men for whom women, up until then, have been an alien gender altogether? My Cousin Rachel doesn't present us with an obviously clear-cut manipulative heroine on par with the recently similarly plotted Lady Macbeth, but its female lead, thanks to Weisz's charm and conviction, is a peculiar marvel nonetheless.
B
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