Movie Review: The Favourite

The Favourite **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos.

Written by: Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara.

Starring: Olivia Colman (Queen Anne), Rachel Weisz (Lady Sarah), Emma Stone (Abigail), Nicholas Hoult (Harley), Joe Alwyn (Masham), Jennifer White (Mrs Meg), LillyRose Stevens (Sally), James Smith (Godolphin), Mark Gatiss (Lord Marlborough).

 

As someone who has been an admirer of Yorgos Lanthimos since seeing Dogtooth nearly a decade ago, it’s nice to finally be able to wholeheartedly recommend one of his films that practically everyone. The formalism on display in masterworks like Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer were always going to rub some (most?) audience the wrong way, and when you recommend his films to some, they are liable to come back and kick you. Not so with The Favourite – which is the first film of his he did not co-write, which allows the dialogue to be looser than normal for Lanthimos – and that extends to the performances as well, which Lanthimos allows to not at all monotone, as is his usual style. And yet while the film is less outwardly what we have come to think of as a Lanthimos film, it is still very much the work of the same director – with the same jaundiced view of the world.

 

It is 18^th Century England, and monarch is Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), a childless widow, who behaves like a spoiled child, and has the understanding of one as well. Her closer adviser – and lover – is Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), who is married to the leader of the English military, who is currently at war with France (over what? who cares – the movie doesn’t). Anne and Sarah were childhood friends, but Sarah is grown up to be smart and cunning and strong – and she basically makes all the decisions for the Queen, using her wiles and flattery to convince her. This little arrangement is upended with the arrival of Abigail (Emma Stone) – Sarah’s distant cousin, whose family has lost their name, and their money, and now Abigail is on the palace steps begging Sarah for a job. She starts as a scullery maid – but works her way up to be one of Sarah’s trusted maids – and then sets her sites on the Queen. What follows is something out of All About Eve or Mean Girls, with Abigail and Sarah fighting with each for favor with the Queen. All three of them are trapped by their gender in roles they don’t much like – only two of them realize this, at least at first (Queen Anne will figure it out by the end).

 

The men in The Favourite are secondary characters – made at all times to look ridiculous and silly. This is evident in the costuming (the great Sandy Powell – outdoing herself here) – that allows the women to look sleek, stylish and sophisticated – and goes over the top in making the men, like Nicolas Hoult or Joe Alwyn, look like idiots with powdered faces, and massive wigs. The women wield sex as a weapon – with each other, with the men – because they know they must. They don’t have the option men have of failing upwards. They have to be constantly planning, constantly on guard. You fall out of favor, you’re in trouble.

 

The Favourite is, it must be said, one of the most entertaining movies of the year. It is hilarious, but in a bitter, acid-tongued way – and it is anchored by three of the very best performances of the year. Olivia Colman is one of those actresses who has been brilliant in everything for years (including Lanthimos’ The Lobster) – and has finally been given the kind of big show-offy role that she can make iconic. The performance would be grand by itself – if it was just a comedic tour-de-force, but what’s remarkable is throughout the film, Colman is able to bring a human side of Queen Anne out. When we first meet all of her rabbits, it’s something to laugh at her about – to mock her. But when she describes why she has them, it breaks your heart. This is also perhaps the best performance of Rachel Weisz’s career. I have never been a huge fan of hers – I find her to be a cold actress – but that’s precisely what makes her fit with Lanthimos so well (so was also in The Lobster). Here, she is always the smartest person in the room –in part, because she knows being the smartest person in the room isn’t enough for her. She is cold and calculated, and downright cruel at times. And on top of those, you also have the best work of Emma Stone’s career so far. Abigail is perhaps the most likable of the characters – at least at first, because unlike the other two, who have money and security, she has nothing. Her scheming is purely out of self-interest sure – but the alternative is prostitution, so you know, it’s understandable. What’s impressive about her, is that you don’t see it coming – she is as cunning and cruel as Lady Sarah – but with a much softer exterior. She does what she has to.

 

Lanthimos lets this all play out in grand style – in a palace with great art direction, and cinematography by Robbie Ryan that, sure, shows off a bit with the fish eye lens’ - but mostly works brilliantly. I have seen The Favourite described as #MeToo movie – mostly by lazy critics, who seem to use #MeToo as short hand for anything about women, because it really is not that. It is about the place women have always been in – a place where being smart and capable were not enough, you had to do more to have any sort of say over your own life, or any power. By the end of the movie, the three women are not destroyed – not quite – but they have all had a comeuppance of sorts. They get the ending they deserve based on their actions – but they shouldn’t have had to take those actions at all, should they?