Yorgos Lanthimos is always aiming to unsettle. It’s impossible to guard against the ways in which he reflects the horrors of humanity upon the audience, and it speaks to his strength as a storyteller that you need to be on his wavelength to get at the meat of his films. He is not a simple provocateur; his images are shocking because of the starkness with which they are shown. The Favourite might feel like kid gloves compared to some familiar with Lanthimos’ past work. There’s nothing in his latest film that feels unspeakably unpleasant, no covering of the eyes or holding of breath. There’s a defanged quality to the imagery, especially compared to Dogtooth or The Killing of a Sacred Deer. But The Favourite still has a ferocious bite, and its encroaching darkness is more subtle, easing you into dangerous places with its biting dark humor.
The setting is 18th century England, where a beleaguered Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) sits upon the throne, too distracted by grief and her failing health to properly comprehend the complexities of her country’s political situation. With an ongoing war with France, a tension between the leading political parties, and rising taxes, Anne leaves most matters of state to Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), her leading confidante, advisor and occasional lover. Sarah is a domineering personality, unafraid of speaking frankly with the Queen about her appearance or her intellectual competence. Her frequent audience with royalty has given her true power and political sway, which she uses to further her own political ambitions and those of her military-minded husband, John (Mark Gatiss), the Duke of Marlborough.
When Sarah’s cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), arrives covered in mud and shit, the Duchess of Marlborough agrees to employ her, though she doesn’t seem to have much sympathy for her cousin’s state. Weaving a tale of hard times, sexual exploitation and loss of title, Abigail finds herself at the Royal Palace but at the bottom of the Totem Pole. Through cunning and seduction, Abigail manages to work herself into the Queen’s good graces. Anne, undone by severe cases of gout and anxiety, comes to prefer Abigail’s unadulterated fawning to Sarah’s tough-love authoritarianism. Threatened, Sarah engages Abigail in a precarious chess match over the Queen’s heart, both women stooping towards manipulation, subterfuge, and occasionally violence to come out on top.
Despite The Favourite‘s many eccentricities, the events are all essentially true, even if the film’s script (by Deborah Davis and Tom McNamara) does embellish the more outrageous moments. This is Lanthimos’ first feature in which he isn’t credited as a writer, and only the second that isn’t a collaboration with his usual writing partner Efthymis Filippou. It’s hard to tell how much Davis and McNamara share the director’s sardonic temperament and his devilish taste for the savagery humans are capable of. The Favourite does spare us the occasional ickiness of The Lobster, and it flatly avoids the shattering brutality in Dogtooth and Sacred Deer. Instead, we’re served a more lukewarm helping of the his patented devastation. Where there once was shock, there’s now a lingering gloom.
Perhaps I should mention that The Favourite is also incredibly funny. This love triangle – perpetuated by greed, ego and isolation – holds the fate of an entire country in its hands, and these women use war stratagem frequently as a bargaining chip to curry favor with Anne, and likewise Anne uses it to impress them with her command. It’s a situation that Lanthimos is wise to mine for comedy, contrasting the high-costume affair (dressed by the great Sandy Powell) with undistinguished behavior. There are times when The Favourite‘s acid-tongued dialogue has the airy glibness of Iannucci – 18th Century Veep – but more often I was reminded of Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick’s persnickety 1975 period epic. That film also had great fun satirizing the stale formalness of 18th century aristocracy, but what The Favourite has which Lyndon does not is three incredibly dynamic female characters.
In her second leading role with Lanthimos after The Lobster, Weisz shows a continued specialty for icy cruelty, layered by precise deadpan delivery which highlights Sarah’s nasty vindictiveness. Throughout The Favourite, Sarah probably overstates her importance and power, and this is probably why she meets Abigail’s flagrant line-stepping which such disbelief – she’s her own desperation reflected back at her. Stone, playing “off type”, is funny and surprisingly sympathetic as Abigail, the former lady who takes advantage of the fact that everyone seems to underestimate her. It’s key to The Favourite‘s mercurial tone that we never get a full grasp of Sarah and Abigail’s motives (and even the tales Abigail spins about her past are worth questioning), whether it be earnest love for the queen, a savoring need for power or basic survival instincts. At times, Anne seems an afterthought to their film-long battle, collateral damage in their quest to best one another.
The three-headed performance at the top of The Favourite is a tremendous piece of collaboration, but it’s Olivia Colman who comes out front and center. Colman’s Queen Anne is as astonishing as it is heartbreaking. Without driving much of the action, Colman is left in a mostly reactionary role, and yet still becomes the film’s central figure, both symbolically and dramatically. Over the course of the film, Anne’s petulance reveals a draining loneliness, an under-confidence brought on by too much power and too little trust. The tragedies in her past combined with the agony of her present leave her searching desperately for love while being unable to know how genuine anyone’s love could truly be. Colman pushes these insecurities to the surface, while still managing to get the film’s biggest laughs, which is a truly remarkable feat.
I could have done without Lanthimos’ preoccupation with fish bowl lenses, an arbitrary directorial stamp that can only be interpreted in ways that are obvious and unnecessary. His framing has always been deliberate, but the shot-making takes a backseat this time to the editing (by Yorgos Mavropsaridis) which magnifies the film’s tense absurdity. The Favourite feels sharper when it’s more purely a drama, even if its humor does give it some uniqueness within the period genre. And yet, there’s still something rather captivating about seeing such a biting, sarcastic political drama centered on three women, and The Favourite‘s self-consciousness in the face of this fact is one of its best qualities. It takes pride in the dastardly things its makes these women do and say, and it’s hard not to share the enthusiasm.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos