Movie Review: In "The Favourite", It’s a War of the Words

Devious, disturbing and darkly funny, The Favourite is, well, the best.

Yorgos Lanthimos has forged a career out of making problematic faves; uber-disturbing, pitch black social satires that deal in abuse, incest, identity, transmogrification and shared psychosis. You could accuse them of being anti-family, anti-monogamy and anti-human.

And, they’re comedies?

This critic—whose tastes sit on the fringe of human decency, anyway—loved his last four features: Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had the pleasure of watching them all in a cinema, where I could also count the walkouts. I saw his latest flick, The Favourite, in a packed cinema too, and unless someone snuck out through a manhole under their seat, I didn’t catch a single early exit. I’d go so far as to call The Favourite an honest-to-goodness crowdpleaser.

Take a moment to retire to your fainting couch where you can recuperate from that revelation.

Fear not, die-hards: The Favourite is unmistakably Lanthimos-esque; singularly strange, alien and deliciously cruel. (There is also an unexpected dance sequence, as in most of his movies. Weird trend.) What makes it relatively audience-friendly is its trio of stars, doing God-level work, breathing life into a tantalising true rivalry, from a spiky script (decades in the making) by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. It’s really funny, and usually when I say that about Yorgos’ stuff, I have to clarify that I didn’t mean 'funny ha ha'. This one is 'funny ha ha'.

Set in 18th century England, it’s the tale of two cousins jockeying for power in the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). England is at war with France, and Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) is the Queen’s "favourite", which is coded language for an illicit mistress. However, Sarah’s a decent wartime consigliere too, and she speaks sharply to the Queen about where to place her army and how to do her makeup. There’s a toxicity to Sarah; she craves power, and even throttles her Queen. Anne, by contrast, is tempestuous, unbalanced and childlike. Her mind isn’t full of scorpions so much as it’s overrun by bunny rabbits. No, seriously, she owns seventeen bunny rabbits; one for each of her deceased children. (Okay, it probably doesn’t sound funny yet. I’m getting there, I promise.)

Sarah’s disgraced cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives at the palace seeking a job, She’s spent a decade being traded between men, beginning with her drunk gambler father, and would like to never endure that again, thanks. This reveals how far she’ll go to reclaim her Lady status, ingratiating herself to Anne, seductively, and plotting against Sarah with foppish, anti-war opposition leader Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult) and horny courtier (Joe Alwyn). They trade stinging, brilliant barbs. When Abigail falsely asks where Sarah’s been after a dastardly prank, Sarah replies curtly, "Hell. I’m sure you shall pass through it one day." Other times, they just use reliable four-letter retorts.

What separates The Favourite from Veep (which is similarly salty and also deals with the misogynistic suspicion aimed at female leaders) is the filmmaking and superb production design. In his first collaboration with cinematographer Robbie Ryan, Lanthimos regularly relies on a fisheye lens to distort the frame and make everything—from Anne’s obscene wealth to Sarah and Abigail’s increasingly bloody feud—look grotesque. (All three leading ladies vomit on screen as well, in nifty synchronicity.) In previous projects, Lanthimos kept the camera uneasily trained on a subject for maximum discomfort. One of this film’s most breathtaking moments comes when the camera suddenly starts rolling behind Rachel Weisz. That simple trick alone made me gasp, and all that had happened was the camera moved a bit. Clearly, he can turn us into putty.

His actors are not so easily moulded. Lanthimos’ earlier efforts all have dialogue recited as similarly and dispassionately as possible (to wickedly disorienting effect). Not so here. Colman’s stormy Queen Anne is an incredible feat of physical transformation, particularly as her body declines. Stone is wonderfully devious and snotty. Weisz is whip-fast and genuinely threatening. Collectively, they make the case that there should be three categories for female actors at the Academy Awards with their complex, diverse, multi-layered and blistering performances.

Still, this is a Yorgos Lanthimos picture, and there is psychosexual turmoil at its core. Here, it becomes the fulcrum on which an entire continent’s fate teeters. Unfortunately for the continent, all three women have mutually exclusive motives. Anne wants unconditional love. Abigail wants unconditional security. Sarah wants unconditional control. Only one thing remains consistent, both in The Favourite and throughout Yorgos Lanthimos’ filmography: the extremes.

5/5