| DAPHNE |
 2007 - UKDirector: Clare Beavan
- Reviewed by Linda
Authors often puts their own life experiences into their work; an author scorned will obviously have an outlet in which to express her frustration. Daphne writes a play about a young man who has a mad crush on his mother-in-law. As the play makes it to stage, the actress Gertrude Lawrence (Janet McTeer) is cast in the older woman role. Frustrated Daphne sees a parallel story to her own life unfold on stage, and Gertrude sees right through it. As Gertrude is "not the kind of woman that men marry", she is a liberating, saucy, and brazen new friend (and later lover) for Daphne. "Gertie" is Daphne's outlet, while Ellen still has her heart. The film itself plays with images that conjure up the film version of Rebecca, with Daphne gazing longingly from the cliffs of Cornwall, waves crashing menacingly below. Her house evokes the famous Manderley, and this revelation of du Maurier's own loves and obsessions sheds new light on her novels' characters. McGovern is bewitching as Ellen, and Janet McTeer is brassy, gorgeous, and saucy as Gertrude, who shakes Daphne out of her unrequited fixation (at least for a bit). And Geraldine Sommerville's Daphne is really the calm vortex in the eye of her own up-ended world. She looks uncomfortable in her own skin, and has a halo of loneliness and longing about her that is heartbreaking. Well-made bio-pics make you want to know more about their subjects. After seeing Daphne, I'll bet you that you'll either be renting Rebecca or picking up the book again. I know I sure did. DVD NOTESThe only extra on the DVD is an interesting, yet curious one—a half-hour film called "Daphne du Maurier's Vanishing Cornwall", filmed in the late 1960s. Du Maurier herself only appears in the opening credits, then otherwise it is just an educational film about the history and the industry of the area, with the narration written by (by not spoken by) Du Maurier herself, and directed by her son. |
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Based on letters published after the famed author's death in 1989, Daphne follows Daphne du Maurier's life and loves starting after World War II until the mid-1950s. The film starts almost 10 years after du Maurier's book Rebecca became a huge bestseller, as well as later an acclaimed cinema hit. Daphne du Maurier (Geraldine Somerville) is accused of plagarism by an author in the United States, who claims that the plot of Rebecca was copied from her own novel. So Daphne takes a ship to America, children in tow, to go on trial. Despite the dreary circumstances, she meets and becomes bewitched by her publisher's wife, Ellen Doubleday (Elizabeth McGovern) while staying with the Doubledays as a guest. Let's just say that Ellen is beautiful and glamourous, and really does nothing to discourage admiration from others. But alas, Ellen does not have "Venetian" tendencies (as Daphne likes to call love between women), and gently rejects Daphne's advances.
