Daphne (2007 film)
2007 television film
Daphne is a 2007 British biographical drama film written by Amy Jenkins and directed by Clare Beavan. The film is based on the authorised biography, Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster. It stars Geraldine Somerville, Elizabeth McGovern and Janet McTeer. It premiered on BBC Two on 12 May 2007. It was filmed on location in London, Devon and Cornwall, where du Maurier spent much of her life and most of her works are set.
Plot
The story begins in 1945, as Daphne is being sued by an author with the claim that she has plagiarised parts of her novel Rebecca. So she boards a ship and while travelling to New York for an appearance at the trial, she meets Ellen Doubleday, who is incredibly glamorous and elegant, and Daphne is instantly smitten. A close friendship develops between the two women, and once Ellen realises that Daphne has feelings for her, she informs Daphne, that while she believes everyone has the right to love without censure, she cannot return those feelings as she is heterosexual.
Frustrated by the rejection, Daphne writes a play called September Tide, about a forbidden love between a young man and his mother-in-law. She sees the mother-in-law character as being based on Ellen.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2007 television film. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3015851. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Daphne (2007 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.