The Favourite (2018, R)

This is the second film I’m seen from Yorgos Lanthimos, after The Lobster.  Like that one, The Favourite is very well put-together and quite funny, but it’s sort of emotionally distant much of the time.  While, on the whole, The Lobster is probably more inventive, I’m better able to connect with the characters here.

The court of Queen Anne is a volatile place.  As the moody, ailing queen languishes between the dueling views of highly-opinionated lords, she retreats to her “special favorite,” the prickly but devoted Lady Sarah.  Matters between the two lovers are complicated by the arrival of Abigail, Sarah’s cousin who’s fallen on hard times.  Sarah eventually hooks Abigail up with a job as her personal maid, but Abigail soon sees the advantage in appealing to Anne’s affections.  Sarah is darkly jealous, and the two cousins war with each other for that favored position at the queen’s side.

I know almost nothing about Queen Anne and her history, so I have no idea if anything beyond the barest shreds of this are true.  It’s certainly an interesting story, an engrossing tale about three complicated women tangled up together by love, manipulation, jealousy, and power.  I like that they’re all flawed and rough and sort of vulgar; in a lot of period pieces, even if female characters get to be complex, they still have to do everything so prettily.  As such, it’s neat to see them eating messily, talking coarsely about sex, throwing ridiculous tantrums, and scheming to unseat one another.

That said, much of the film is shot with the, call it “apathetic,” mood of The Lobster.  The plot is very much a heightened reality filled with absurdities, but the characters often act very blasé about it all.  Many of the lines are recited in these flat tones that make me feel kept at arm’s leangth, like they’re somewhere between characters and wind-up people.  For me, the overall effect is a little cold.  Of the numerous Oscar nominations The Favourite garnered, Lanthimos’s director nod is the one I’m most dubious about, and it’s for this reason.  While I get from The Lobster that this is his style, I tend to find it fighting against my very genuine desire to get lost in the film.

However, if the film often feels cold, that means that the emotionally-honest moments in the movie, both overt and subtle, stand out a lot more.  I love seeing the long, slow shift in Anne’s expression as she (with limited mobility) sits watching Sarah dance with a man, or hearing the ardor in Sarah’s voice as she insists that she proves her love to Anne by telling her the truth instead of flattering her.

As such, the film puts the performers in an unusual position.  While the trio of actresses – Olivia Colman as Anne, Rachel Weisz as Sarah, and Emma Stone as Abigail – are all very capable, a good portion of the film has all of them acting deliberately remote, which makes my brain go, “Sure, they’re good, but ‘best performances of the year’ good??”  But then, in the scenes where the film drops the artifice and the characters get real, either with each other or silently to themselves, they bring the truth of it forth so well.

This is obviously a film where the ladies are the big show, and they all have the Oscar nominations to prove it, but there are some strong male actors giving drily-comic performances as well, including the always-good Nicholas Hoult (he lives!  he dies!  he lives again!), Mark Gatiss (a.k.a. Mycroft Holmes,) and, of course, James Smith (Glenn from The Thick of It) as a lord with walks around with a duck on a leash.

Warnings

Sexual content, violence, language, gross-out humor, drinking, and thematic elements.