"Rebecca" an elegantly mounted iteration that offers pretty things but oddly lacks tension

Rebecca (2020)

Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic romance novel “Rebecca” has now been adapted to the screen twice with eighty years in between both films. Alfred Hitchcock’s haunting 1940 classic was an Oscar-winner for Best Picture, and now, maverick filmmaker Ben Wheatley (2017’s “Free Fire”) takes a crack at the material. With more than enough time passing, this “Rebecca” doesn’t try to improve upon or replace Hitchcock but rather honor the source material. If Wheatley took a gamble in adapting a story that was already perfected as a film, he actually doesn’t take enough risks to make this elegantly mounted if curiously hushed iteration his own. 

Working as a traveling companion to social climber Mrs. Van Hopper (Ann Dowd) in Monte Carlo, a meek and mild young woman (Lily James) meets the dashing and wealthy Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), a recent widower. Sending her correspondences to go on romantic drives, lunches, and strolls, he sweeps the young lady off her feet, and before she knows it, she’s the new Mrs. de Winter. Maxim takes his bride back to his homestead estate of Manderley—one of the finest homes in England—full of staff and run by fiercely devoted housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas). Maxim will not tell his new wife much about his Rebecca, the former Mrs. De Winter, but as she settles into her new life, evidence surfaces to suggest that Rebecca’s death was no accident.

Like how the spirit of Rebecca hangs over Manderley, comparisons of Hitchcock’s film to Wheatley’s film will surely haunt those who have seen both. That wouldn’t be such a hurdle if 2020’s “Rebecca” didn’t feel so indebted to the past, as written by Jane Goldman (2016's "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Joe Shrapnel & Anna Waterhouse. Ravishingly period-dressed and visually striking, the film is first-rate on a technical level. On a narrative level, however, there isn’t enough weight or rooting interest in the core relationship between Maxim and his new wife. Instead of witnessing much conversation to understand what the soon-to-be Mrs. de Winter sees in this wealthy man on their several dates and trysts, Wheatley mostly treats us to gorgeous, sun-dappled views and Maxim marking his name in sand on her naked back. It’s not really until a sleepwalking nightmare and then the costume ball Mrs. de Winter brings back to Manderley where director Wheatley’s independent-minded sensibilities even show their face. As she is tricked into surprising her husband by wearing a certain someone’s gown, Mrs. de Winter’s sanity begins to shake, and Wheatley employs an 1960s folk song by Pentangle to push the off-kilter mood.

Lily James (2018's "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again") can play sweet, warm naïveté and tormented convincingly as the anonymously pretty Mrs. de Winter 2.0, who will constantly live in the shadow of Rebecca until all traces of her ghost are gone. Armie Hammer (2019's "Wounds") registers fine as the handsome yet not-too-trustworthy Maxim de Winter. Sam Riley, as Rebecca’s playboy cousin Jack Favelll; Keeley Hawes, as Maxim’s sympathetic sister Beatrice; and Ann Dowd, as the snobbish Mrs. Van Hopper, also make impressions. The film only ever perks up, though, when Mrs. Danvers is lurking around. Kristin Scott Thomas is a riveting Mrs. Danvers, playing the manipulative ice queen in an understatedly withering key but still able to turn a smile right back into a nefarious scowl.

Akin to any classic Hollywood motion picture, there is the surface-level pleasure of just watching beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful locales. Besides the luxurious costume design, lush production design of the estate, and an endlessly watchable turn by Kristin Scott Thomas, something about this adaptation feels too restrained and muted of tension and its Gothic trappings to get passionate about. “Rebecca” is also too slick and enticing to look at to ever be a dull non-entity, but one wishes the film went all full-bore soapy theatricality, like Guillermo del Toro’s delicious “Crimson Peak.” Anything would be more adventurous than what Mr. Wheatley goes for here. 

Grade: C +

Netflix released “Rebecca” (121 min.) in select theaters and to stream on October 21, 2020.