The Favourite (2018, Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
The Summary: In the 18th Century in the court of Queen Anne of England, two women, one newly arrived and one an old acquaintance, vie for the favor of the aging and ill queen.
The Good: Lavish and bizarre cinematography that constantly delights. Excellent performances by everyone involved, especially when dealing with the more bizarre elements of the script. Excellent examination of motive and morality.
The Bad: Very weird (this won’t be a negative for everyone, I’m sure). Has a small number of scenes that I feel outwear their welcome.
The Review: Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite continues his recent trend (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) of making visually arresting, absurdist films that have a way of worming their way into your subconscious and nesting there for a very long time. I have thought of The Favourite almost daily since first seeing it over a week ago. It has taken me some time to arrange my feelings about the movie, which I consider to be excellent, if perhaps not quite on par with his previous two efforts.
Having read very little about the movie before attending, I was surprised at the level of historicity of the film. From his previous work, I was expecting a movie detached from history and set in a sort of allegorical Enlightenment. Instead, the movie is populated with real historic figures from the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). I was surprisingly engaged by this, as I knew relatively little of the Queen or her reign. Unsurprisingly, the movie takes broad historic liberties with the actual events, but being grounded in real history gave it a feeling of reality that might make this the first Lanthimos film that people who aren’t fans of absurdist cinema might like. At the outset of the film, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) has the ear of the queen, and uses her favor to enact political change of her preference. Many Councillors and Representatives can’t even get an audience, and are forced to go through Sarah, whom they resent. This status quo is interrupted by the arrival of a cousin of Lady Sarah’s, Abigail (Emma Stone), who has fallen from grace and requests a simple job as a servant. When it is granted, though, she immediately begins working to better herself and improve her position and safety at court.
From the very beginning the movie plays in ingenious ways with the sympathies of the viewer. Almost constantly over the two hour runtime the viewer is forced to ask themselves who is manipulating whom, and constantly question the morality of the central three women. As the plottings and betrayals escalate, it’s clear that Lanthimos is creating a murky soup of moral ambiguity, and that is what has made the movie stay with me. I find myself thinking about the characters and whether, ultimately, I approve of what they did. Even more so than other films with the same goal, this one really achieves the ambiguity it seeks, and I am honestly at a loss to tell you whether or not I think the characters got what they deserved.
In addition to the solid character work, the film is visually inventive. The director’s use of fish-eye lenses continues to create a sense of the surreal even in the intricately ornate trappings of a period-specific palace. Slow motion is used brilliantly to enhance the grotesqueries of the court, and montage does double duty for the psychological stresses experienced by the characters. None of this is distracting or over-the-top. It just shows a mature director using all of the tools at his disposal to make a beautifully ugly and terrifying narrative of the vagaries of courtly life. The director has by no means abandoned his absurdist roots, and the microcosm of bizarre traditions and rituals that made up 18th Century England prove a fertile ground for observations on the absurdity of life. More screen time is given over to the ensemble than would traditionally be in a movie of this type, all in service of creating a rich background tapestry of the madness of court life. It all works very well.
I was also very pleasantly surprised by the depths that the movie revealed over and above the trailers (that I saw at least). The movie ended up being far more than I thought it would, but to discuss some of the thematic materials, I must delve slightly into the territory of spoilers. If what I have said thus far intrigues you, know that the movie is excellent and comes highly recommended. If you are still curious, read on (although I won’t get into anything serious and certainly won’t ruin how it all turns out).
About halfway through the movie, it changes from a simple story of courtly intrigue to an explicit lesbian psychodrama. The favor that the two young women are courting with the queen becomes explicitly sexual in nature, and this is where the depths of the film really make themselves known. It ceases to be a purely surface level, practical manipulation for any of them and becomes entangled with affairs of the heart (or not, in some cases). This is the greatest trick that the movie pulls off. Just when you are thinking that the movie has played its hand, it adds a fascinating new level to everything that has gone before, making the viewer reconsider the proceedings in a new light. The historical validity of these relationships lies somewhere between sketchy and non-existent according to what I’ve read, but I don’t really care because the drama it creates is intense and fascinating.
While I don’t feel like this is Lanthimos’ greatest film (it’s a little too bound by the historical realities within which he’s working), it’s certainly an excellent movie. Though it didn’t blow my mind like The Lobster, it may be the perfect compromise as a movie that not just arthouse film buffs can enjoy. Strongly recommended so long as its explicit sexuality doesn’t keep you away.
The Score: 
