Feel free to pick and choose — you don’t need to run every question in one sitting unless your book club is prepared to spend the whole evening arguing about whether she did it.

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CHARACTERS: WHO IS RACHEL, REALLY — AND DOES EITHER VERSION KNOW?
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  1. Casting Call from the Cornish Cliffs
    When Rachel Weisz appeared as Rachel — intelligent, warm, possibly lethal, and almost certainly amused by all of this — did your mental image of du Maurier’s Rachel say yes, exactly her, or did it hedge its bets the way the novel does? Same question for Sam Claflin as Philip. Who felt most like the character you encountered on the page, and who felt like a different but defensible interpretation of someone du Maurier left deliberately underspecified?
  2. Philip Ashley: Gothic Heroine in Britches
    One critic noted that Philip inverts the usual gothic structure by casting the young man as the imperiled, trembling, vacillating figure — essentially a gothic heroine in britches. The novel gives us Philip’s interiority in full, obsessive, unreliable detail; the film has to put all of that on Sam Claflin’s face. Did the film capture the specific quality of Philip’s unreliability — the way his perception of Rachel shifts so completely that the reader can’t trust a single thing he tells us? And did Claflin find the right balance between his charming boyishness and what one critic called his far more dangerous anger?
  3. Rachel Weisz’s Rachel: Ambiguity as Performance
    When Rachel Weisz first read Michell’s script, she immediately asked him whether Rachel was innocent. He said he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Critics described the result as an impressive, equally maddening central performance — a sort of cinematic Rorschach test. Did Weisz maintain the ambiguity the role requires, or did her performance tip the scales toward one reading? And is there a point at which sustaining perfect ambiguity across 106 minutes becomes its own kind of achievement — or its own kind of problem?
  4. Ambrose Ashley: The Dead Man Who Runs Everything
    Ambrose never appears — in either version — except in letters and in Philip’s memory. Yet he determines the entire plot: Philip’s inheritance, Rachel’s motive, the Cornish estate, Philip’s obsession. Did the novel or the film make you feel Ambrose’s absence more as a presence? Is there a version of this story where Ambrose’s death feels unambiguously like murder rather than illness — and did either version push you toward that reading?
  5. Louise and Nick Kendall: The Sanity Philip Refuses
    Louise Kendall loves Philip sensibly and openly, and her father, Nick, represents the rational, institutional world that Philip keeps ignoring in favor of his fixation on Rachel. Did either version make you feel the tragedy of Louise’s position — watching Philip destroy himself over a woman who may not deserve it? And was Nick’s skepticism about Rachel more convincing in the novel, where we have Philip’s interior resistance to it, or in the film, where Iain Glen plays it against Claflin’s face?
  6. Rainaldi: The Sinister Italian, or Just a Convenient Villain?
    Rainaldi — Rachel’s Florentine lawyer and rumored former lover — is the novel’s most convenient red herring: a sinister-seeming foreigner who exists partly to give Philip’s jealousy a specific target. Did the film do enough with Rainaldi to make him feel like a genuine character rather than a plot function? And in a story about misogyny and the way men project their fears onto women, is Rainaldi’s sinisterness itself a form of Philip’s bias — a man assuming another man must be responsible for whatever Rachel is?

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THE AMBIGUITY QUESTION: DID SHE OR DIDN’T SHE?
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  1. The Central Ambiguity: How Each Version Handles It
    Du Maurier herself admitted that while writing the novel she became so completely Philip that she was beguiled, and Rachel could have poisoned the entire world and she would not have cared. The film strongly hints at one conclusion in one scene then offers definitive evidence for the opposite in the next. Did you find the film’s handling of the ambiguity more or less satisfying than the novel’s? And by the end of each version, where did you personally land — guilty, innocent, or genuinely unable to decide?
  2. The Tisanas: Herbal Tea or Slow Poison?
    Rachel’s herbal infusions — the tisanas she brews for Ambrose and later for Philip — are the story’s most loaded prop. They might be medicinal. They might be murderous. They might be both. Did the film use the tisanas with the same controlled menace as the novel, or did the visual medium — which can’t avoid showing you the tea being made — tip the ambiguity in one direction? And is there a moment in either version where you became certain of their meaning, only to have that certainty undermined?
  3. Philip as Unreliable Narrator: What We Can and Cannot Trust
    The novel is narrated entirely by Philip, which means every piece of evidence we have about Rachel is filtered through the consciousness of a man who is first violently prejudiced against her, then violently in love with her — and either state is equally unreliable. The film loses this first-person framing entirely. Did you find the film’s third-person perspective more or less useful for evaluating Rachel’s guilt? And did the loss of Philip’s unreliable narration make the central mystery easier or harder to sustain?
  4. The Will, the Jewels, and the Money: Following the Financial Trail
    Philip signs over his entire estate to Rachel before he is legally of age, based on feelings he cannot fully explain. This is either the act of a man in love or of a man being manipulated by a woman who needs his money and his name. Did the novel or the film make the financial motive feel more convincing? And does knowing that Rachel actually gives the jewels back change your reading of her intentions — or is that exactly what a very clever person would do?

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PLOT SURGERY: WHAT MICHELL KEPT, WHAT HE GALLOPED PAST
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  1. The 1952 Film That Du Maurier Hated
    Du Maurier declared Henry Koster’s 1952 adaptation — starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton — desperate and untrue to the novel. Michell’s 2017 version is widely regarded as staying true to the source. Does faithfulness to the novel translate directly into a better film? Or does the 1952 film’s unfaithfulness at least suggest a different, potentially interesting approach to the material that Michell’s fidelity forecloses?
  2. The Galloping Problem: Emotional Shortcuts and Added Sex Scenes
    One reviewer noted that Michell kept most key plot points but cut the moments in between that hold the story together emotionally, causing the film to feel like it was galloping through the book’s plot. Michell added two sex scenes that the novel doesn’t contain — apparently as shortcuts to imply love. Did the film earn the emotional progression between Philip and Rachel, or did it feel accelerated? And did the sex scenes do the work they were meant to do, or did they feel like exactly the kind of shortcut a more patient adaptation would not have needed?
  3. The Opening Line: Literature vs. Wikipedia
    The novel opens with one of the most perfectly calibrated first lines in twentieth-century gothic fiction: They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. The film opens with: “Did she, or didn’t she?” Who’s to blame? — a line one critic described as adapted from the Wikipedia summary of the novel. Did the film’s opening set up the right story, or did making the central question so explicit immediately flatten the ambiguity the novel spends 300 pages carefully constructing? And is there a case that spelling it out is actually the right move for a film that can’t afford du Maurier’s slow build?
  4. The 1830s Setting: Period Piece as Formal Choice
    Michell estimated that the novel is set in the 1830s based on the absence of railways and the presence of canals, and he approached it as he would other period material. The novel wears its period lightly — du Maurier was more interested in psychology than historical texture. Did the film’s period design feel like an asset to the story or a distraction from it? And did the bonnets and breeches and puffy shirts, add to the gothic atmosphere or tip it toward costume drama at the expense of menace?
  5. Michell’s Added Lines for Rachel: 2017 Woman in a 19th-Century World
    Michell wrote new dialogue for Rachel in which she explicitly asserts her desire for independence: Can you not let me be a woman in my own right? And why can I not make a life of my own? These lines don’t exist in the novel. Du Maurier’s Rachel makes the same point implicitly, through her behavior and the men’s reactions to it. Did the addition of explicit feminist dialogue feel like a clarification of du Maurier’s intent or a simplification of it? And does making the theme explicit change the film’s relationship to the ambiguity — tilting Rachel toward victim rather than allowing her to remain genuinely unknowable?

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TONE & VIBE: HOW GOTHIC IS THIS ROMANCE, REALLY?
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  1. Gothic Romance or Feminist Thriller? Both?
    Critics described the film variously as a gothic period drama, a romantic mystery, and a feminist thriller — and struggled to land on one. The novel is similarly genre-slippery: it uses gothic conventions (the brooding hero, the mysterious woman, the remote estate, the possible poison) while remaining genuinely uncertain whether those conventions apply. Did either version commit to a genre, or did both leave you productively unsure what kind of story you were in? And is genre ambiguity an asset or a frustration in this particular story?
  2. Stately but Frustrating: The Pacing Question
    One critic called the film stately but frustrating — a film that exists in a sort of limbo-like existence, unable to decide what it is and unwilling to commit to a point of view. The novel is sometimes criticized for similar reasons — that the ambiguity becomes its own kind of evasion. Did you find the pacing of each version appropriate to the psychological material, or did either feel like it was using ambiguity as an excuse not to commit? And is there a version of this story that resolves the ambiguity and is better for it?
  3. Cornwall as Character
    Du Maurier’s Cornwall — the cliffs, the sea, the light, the particular quality of a landscape that is beautiful and dangerous simultaneously — is as much a presence in the novel as any character. Critics praised the film’s cinematography for its slightly off-kilter compositions, the camera skirting close to the ground or swinging up in the air at the junction of land and sea. Did the film’s Cornwall feel like the Cornwall you imagined? And which medium made the landscape feel more psychologically loaded — du Maurier’s prose, which can tell you what the place means, or Michell’s camera, which can only show you what it looks like?
  4. The Du Maurier Atmosphere: Menace Without Resolution
    Du Maurier’s best work operates in a register of sustained unease — you feel that something is wrong without being able to specify exactly what, and the resolution (when it comes) doesn’t so much answer the question as deepen it. Did each version sustain that specific quality of du Maurier atmosphere? And how does My Cousin Rachel compare, in your reading and watching, to Rebecca — du Maurier’s better-known gothic novel, where the dead woman’s presence is similarly pervasive, but the moral architecture is more clearly drawn?

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PAGE VS. SCREEN: WHO UNDERSTOOD RACHEL BETTER?
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  1. The First-Person Problem: Philip’s Voice on Screen
    Du Maurier’s novel is narrated in first person by Philip, which means everything we know about Rachel — her warmth, her intelligence, her possible guilt — is filtered through a consciousness that is simultaneously biased against her and in love with her. The film has no narrator. Did Michell find a visual equivalent for that first-person unreliability, or does the film’s third-person perspective give Rachel a kind of objectivity the novel deliberately denies her? And does having access to Rachel from the outside, rather than through Philip’s obsession, make her more or less mysterious?
  2. Scenes That the Film Staged Better Than You Imagined
    Name one moment where Michell’s camera gave you something du Maurier’s prose couldn’t: the Cornwall landscape at a particular hour, the tisanas being prepared, a look between Rachel and Philip that the novel can only describe. Which visual moment felt like the best possible version of what this story needed?
  3. What the Book Did That the Film Couldn’t
    Du Maurier’s prose has a specific quality — controlled, precise, building dread through accumulation rather than incident. Were there passages — Philip’s shifting assessments of Rachel, the letters from Ambrose, the slow accretion of suspicion and desire — that no amount of good acting could replicate on screen? Name one thing the novel gave you that the film could not structurally deliver.
  4. Rachel Weisz vs. the Page’s Rachel: A Fair Fight?
    The novel’s Rachel is constructed almost entirely from the outside — we see her through Philip’s eyes, which means we can never fully trust what we see. Weisz plays a woman who seems to know she is being watched and is performing accordingly. Did this performance feel faithful to du Maurier’s Rachel, or did Weisz inevitably make Rachel more legible than the novel intends? And is there a version of My Cousin Rachel where casting a less magnetic, less movie-star actress would actually better serve the ambiguity?

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THEMES: MISOGYNY, OBSESSION, AND THE WOMAN WHO WILL NOT BE KNOWN
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  1. The Real Poison: Philip’s Misogyny
    Time Out argued that the real killer in du Maurier’s story is not Rachel but the claustrophobically adoring men who want to control her — that Philip’s obsession is itself a form of violence, and the question of whether Rachel poisoned Ambrose is almost beside the point compared to the question of what Philip’s certainty does to her. Did either version make you feel that reading? Or did both versions keep the murder mystery central enough that the gender politics remained subtext rather than text?
  2. Women’s Freedom in a Man’s World
    Michell has said he wanted Rachel to feel like a woman from 2017 who parachuted into a 19th-century world. Du Maurier — a bold and independent woman herself — encoded exactly this tension in the novel without making it explicit. Did the film’s more explicit feminist framing feel like the right update, or did it risk making Rachel a modern heroine in period dress rather than a product of her specific historical moment? And does making the gender politics explicit change what the story is?
  3. Obsession as a Substitute for Knowledge
    Philip never actually knows Rachel. What he feels for her — the hatred, then the love, then the terrible guilt at the end — is entirely his own construction, built on letters, gossip, and a few months of proximity. Both versions ask whether obsessive love is a form of seeing or a form of blindness. Did the novel or the film make you feel that distinction more precisely? And is Philip’s final grief — after Rachel dies — grief for Rachel herself, or grief for the Rachel he invented?
  4. The Inheritance and the Body: Property, Marriage, and What Women Are Owed
    The plot turns on property — Ambrose’s estate, Philip’s inheritance, Rachel’s legal rights as a widow under 19th-century law, which are nearly nonexistent. Rachel’s possible motives are entirely material: she needs money and legal protection in a world that denies both to women without a male guardian. Did either version make you feel the specific injustice of that system — and does understanding it change your reading of Rachel’s guilt? If she did what Philip suspects, is the real crime the one she committed, or the one the law committed against her?

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OVERALL ADAPTATION VERDICT: GUILTY, INNOCENT, OR JUST BEAUTIFULLY EVASIVE?
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  1. Faithful Adaptation, Mixed Results: The Du Maurier Dilemma
    The 2017 film is widely described as faithful to the novel — and yet one reviewer raised the question directly: is it better to change a book’s narrative for a film adaptation? Michell’s faithfulness preserves the ambiguity but also, some critics argued, preserves the novel’s pacing problems and its lack of resolution in ways that don’t quite translate to cinema. Did the film’s faithfulness feel like a virtue, or did it occasionally feel like a constraint? And is du Maurier’s specific brand of ambiguity — which works through prose accumulation — something that can survive the adaptation process?
  2. What Each Version Does Best
    One gold star for the novel, one for the film. They don’t have to be for the same thing. (Suggested categories: Best Unreliable Narrator Who Doesn’t Know He’s Unreliable; Best Use of Herbal Tea as a Weapon of Mass Uncertainty; Best Performance Sustaining Ambiguity Across an Entire Film; Best Gothic Landscape Doing Psychological Heavy Lifting; Best Ending That Answers Nothing and Means Everything.)
  3. Recommend: Read, Watch, or Both?
    If a friend had time for only one version — novel or film — which would you send them to first, and why? Would your answer change if they’re a du Maurier devotee who has strong feelings about Rebecca? If they’re a Rachel Weisz fan who wants the performance without the homework? If they want the full feminist reading of the material rather than the gothic romance version? And is there a case that the film is actually the more accessible entry point to a novel that requires considerable patience with Philip’s unreliability?
  4. Order of Operations
    Novel then film, film then novel, or just one and done? Does reading the novel first mean you spend the film monitoring whether Weisz’s Rachel matches du Maurier’s deliberately unknowable one — and finding small divergences that bother you more than they should? Does watching the film first give you a Rachel who then inhabits the novel with a specific face and voice, which either enriches or constrains the reading? And is there an argument that the two versions are doing sufficiently different things with the ambiguity that experiencing both gives you something neither alone can provide?
  5. Final Club Gut Check
    On the dial from “perfect page-to-screen translation” to “loosely inspired by a feeling of Cornish gothic menace with excellent costume design,” where does the 2017 My Cousin Rachel land? And the question that both versions leave you with, walking out of the cinema or closing the book: do you actually want to know whether Rachel did it — or is the not-knowing the entire point?

Use, tweak, or mash these questions as needed — your club, your verdict.