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(4.5 / 5)

I haven’t seen The Lobster, but I’ve heard mixed things. I saw The Killing of a Sacred Deer last year, and I had a mixed reaction to it. So forgive me when I say that I went into The Favourite with some reservations. I didn’t want to see another Sacred Deer—a frustrating film that did more to portend the potential greatness of its filmmaker than to showcase its own. But, having seen those hints of greatness, and knowing that Yorgos Lanthimos had it in him somewhere, I was excited, too.

And I’m happy to report that, as of The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos has found his footing as a director. I really liked this film. It’s funny, smart, and sumptuous-looking. The rich baroque set design is transportive, but The Favourite never feels like a stuffy period piece. Its themes and sense of humor are timely, and serve as smart counterpoints to the antiquated sets, setting and dialogue. Even the dialogue itself is of two minds—at once period-accurate (or passably so, at least) and subversively modern, but seldom in a way that’s grating to the ear.

But maybe the film’s most important point of contrast is between its extravagance—the enormity of the coiffures, the lavishness of the set design, the scope of all that’s happening, including a war with France and local civil unrest, outside the palace walls—and the smallness of the storytelling. The plot is uncomplicated: In early 1700’s Britain, during the War of Spanish Succession, Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) various illnesses are making it harder and harder for her to govern. The person really calling the shots is Anne’s closest friend, confidant, and secret lesbian lover, Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz). But when Sarah’s estranged cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), turns up at the palace seeking employment, Sarah soon finds her privileged position in jeopardy, and herself embroiled in a battle for the queen’s affection and ear.

There’s a sort of metaplot involving a dispute between the Whigs and Tories over whether to raise taxes and prolong war efforts against France or sue for peace. But it’s not the focus of the movie. Rather, the grand scope of the parliamentary infighting and the war that’s being played out on a continental stage is ingeniously funneled down into the more insular narrative about Queen Anne, Sarah, and Abigail. The Whigs’ proposal to raise taxes, send more troops to the front lines and crush the French is backed by Sarah, who works one of Anne’s ears while Abigail, who’s really ambivalent about the war, but whose social status stands to gain from doing favors for the Tories, works the other. The intimate story of Abigail’s and Sarah’s rivalry for the queen’s favor is the real movie’s focus. It’s a microcosmic distillation of all that stuffy gobbledygook that tends to weigh down so many political-procedural and period movies, and it’s part of what sets The Favourite apart from them.

It’s clear throughout the film that, while the men in parliament peacock and pontificate, it’s the ladies who hold the power. The Tories, headed by Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult), and the Whigs, are portrayed as ridiculous and childlike. They seem more interested in outdressing one another, and in winning at duck-racing, than in pushing forward new legislation. Robert Harley wears an increasingly outrageous series of beauty marks on his face, up to and including one shaped like a lion. He and his constituents recreationally pelt fat men with fruit. He shoves Abigail twice in acts of schoolboy-like flirtation.

The men are preposterously indulgent. But the queen has her indulgences, too. She is addicted to cake. I don’t think she knows it’s correlated with her gout, but, as we watch her vomit just to make room for more cake, we get the sense that if she did know, she would gorge anyway. She likes nothing better than to sit sprawled in the company of her seventeen rabbits, each of whom is named for one of her dead children. And, of course, there’s her secret lesbianism.

Sometimes it feels like The Favourite is showing us things we shouldn’t be seeing. Like we’re voyeuristically peering into the lives of people around whom power and the passage of time have cast an air of infallibility. One way the movie communicates this is through the cinematography. In another clever exercise of contrast, the rich, painterly camerawork you’d expect from a baroque-era period piece is offset by fisheye views that peer out from strange and disorienting angles. It often feels like we’re looking through a peephole, or like we’re watching security-cam footage. The use of the fisheye lens reinforces the intimacy of the central narrative, the creepiness of the central conceit (using sex to leverage power), and the taboo nature of watching the bedroom habits of royals.

Despite all this technical prowess, The Favourite wouldn’t have worked without strong performances from its three leading ladies. Luckily, they not only deliver, but turn in three of the best performances I’ve seen this year. Weisz carries herself with quiet gravitas, never raising her voice, but commanding whatever room she walks into. Stone, for her part, is convincingly duplicitous as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She’s coy one minute, conniving the next.

But The Favourite is undeniably Colman’s movie. Her Queen Anne is just a mess in the best possible way. She’s somehow simultaneously repulsive and sympathetic, tyrannical and gentle, scary and sad. Colman navigates her mood-swings with incredible elasticity, in a performance that will make you laugh and cry. It’s really something to behold.

And on the whole, so is The Favourite. This is modern filmmaking of the highest order. It’s ambitious but small, poignant but funny, expertly written, filmed, and acted. It’s Yorgos Lanthimos deciding to stop fucking around and be the director we knew he could be. The only reason I’m not going to call it a masterpiece is that, for all the invention and entertainment value in the first two acts, the third act seems to lose a little creative steam. But a dark and profound finale nearly redeems it.

Maybe it will come to be called a masterpiece in time. For now, at least, of all the films I’ve seen this year, The Favourite is, well, mine.t