December 22, 2018 6 min to read

The Favourite

Lanthimos’ trademark absurdity and deadpan humor are there, and then some in The Favourite, the best piece of historical fiction since Inglorious Bastards.

by Zach Saul

On an average friday night, if you’d have asked me if I’d like to go watch a period piece about Queen Anne, I’d have sneered at you. The Favourite isn’t a period piece though, it’s a comedy - and Lanthimos makes that clear from the jump. If you weren’t sure what you were getting yourself into — when Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) backhands Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and yells “f*** me” your expectations for a proper high society piece should have evaporated. Lanthimos instead gives us an incredibly symbolic and wonderfully weird black comedy that feels way more relevant than an eighteenth century movie should. He’s loudly declaring that the British aristocracy is absolutely ridiculous, and thus the film he’s making about it will be too.

The story is about a power struggle between Lady Sarah and Abigail (Emma Stone), a daughter of a disgraced Lord who lost his daughter in a gambling match. Abigail escapes a life of rape and slavery by showing up covered in dirt begging Lady Sarah for a job. Lady Sarah starts her off as a maid scrubbing floors, and doing chores but when the Queen gets sick, Abigail sees an opportunity. Using her silver tongue and natural charm, Abigail cons her way past the doorman and into the queen’s quarters to put some fresh herbs on Queen Anne’s leg— earning the respect of both Lady Sarah and the Queen.

Anne’s obesity and poor health made it difficult for her to do much of anything, and because of this, she required almost constant care and companionship. But her physical limitations didn’t constrain her character. Lady Sarah and Abigail spend the film competing for her affections, and dodging and weaving her every whim. Anne’s moodiness and behavioral changes make life difficult for her advisors, and her two lovers, but they weren’t without explanation. Anne’s chambers contained the cages of seventeen pet rabbits, who served as living memorials for her seventeen failed pregnancies she suffered through. Since Anne’s character is by far the most jagged and complicated in the film, I thought this was a brilliant piece of symbolism to represent the demons she carried, and insecurities she was grappling with. In the lightly absurd universe The Favourite creates, the rabbits served as a much more effective piece of character development then a teary eyed confession with a symphonic overture would have.

As tensions escalated to win the queen’s favor Abigail and Sarah were completely unaffected by the havok each of their jealous escalations wreaked, and Anne seemed to get a rise out of all of it. In Lady Sarah’s case, it seemed her motivations were partially rooted in love, but for Abigail’s they were certainly rooted in greed and a thirst for power. Abigail is a hustler through and through, and despite her ruthless behavior it’s tough to blame her given what she’d been through just to (in her words) “take control of her situation”. Early in the movie, there’s a scene that stood out to me where Lady Sarah is teaching Abagail to shoot pigeons and explained the mindset of these two women. Abigail asks Sarah (in different words) if she’s conscious of the casualties of war, and Sarah replies “There’s always a price to pay. Just like you sacrificed your pussy to save your father, I’m prepared to do what it takes.” Fairly or unfairly, this moment redefines the rules of decency: when you live in a society where you’re not taken seriously, or in Abigail’s case not seen as human you have to do what it takes to survive, no matter the cost.

The movie’s strong feminist themes are particularly well executed; Abigail and Sarah are constantly poking fun at what we expect of eighteenth century women. In one of the stranger flirtatious scenes you’ll ever see, Abigail and Masham (her eventual husband) are rolling around affectionately in the fall leaves and every time he moves in to kiss her she knees him in the crotch or impales him in some way as the playfully wrestle. She then tenderly asks him “don’t we make a great pair?” The scene is incredibly funny, but also emblematic of the role men play in The Favourite, as pawns or fixtures for plights of it’s leading women. I will never, ever forget the hilarious scene where Emma Stone is loudly thinking through her next chess move in a frantic soliloquy on her wedding night. Her husband Masham (Joe Alwyn) declares he’s “hard as a rock” and she begrudgingly reaches back and satisfies him with one hand never making eye contact with him or losing her train of thought.

There’s a lot to unpack in “The Favourite” - but what I will remember most from the film is how funny the dialogue is line for line, for the entire two hours. Tony McNamara and Deborah Davis wrote an incredibly clever screenplay that never lags, is constantly toying with gender, class, and symbolism. Sometimes vulgar language seems like it’s used to get the audience’s attention, as the characters call each other “cunts” and “bitches” as the tensions mount in the second hour. I appreciated this deviation - it gave the film a much more playful and interesting tone and signalled the audience we were free to let go of our expectations for historical accuracy. It also serves as a nice compliment to the film’s visual style. The intentionally disorienting camera, the strange typography, and the dialogue all work together to distance us from the english monarchy even as we’re staring at it.

The Good: The Favourite is Yorgos Lanthimos’ best movie, and I feel ready to indoctrinate him into the pantheon of elite filmmakers in their prime. If I had to make a movie to save my life, today, he would be one of the first five phone calls I made. The visual style is delightfully weird and interesting (the image of the court pelting oranges at a naked man in a wig will definitely stick in my mind), and Lanthimos’ is finally complimented by a screenplay worthy of his talents directing.

The Bad: There’s an argument to be made some of the devices used in The Favourite are there for shock value as opposed to substance. The language, nudity, distorted camera lenses, and typography all implore us to take the universe the movie creates less seriously. For better or for worse Lanthimos is placing our focus on the thematic overtones of Abigail and Sarah’s tug of war, and the absurdity of it all.