The Favourite

The big 2019 Oscar contenders are coming. The movies that arrive hyped up to the last, the ones everyone is buzzing to see. Between now and March they'll come thick and fast and give us barely enough time to digest one before the next must see movie trundles out and beats us around the noggin. It's a heady time to be a movie fan and it's my favourite time of the year to go to the cinema. Well it's between now and October. For some reason that month is packed with goodness too. But now in January we get The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos' follow up to his excellent 'The Killing Of A Sacred Deer'. It's riding in on the same wave of hype as it's predecessor did. For me, Deer just pips it but that doesn't mean it isn't good though. Because it definitely is.

It's 1708. Queen Anne is a broken woman. Her head is a mess and gout is slowly devouring her. The country's at war with France and she can barely get out of bed. Her confidante and advisor Duchess Sarah is the de-facto leader of the country, the woman making the decisions that Anne can't get her head around. The only thing keeping her in check is the suspicions of Robert Harley, an MP responsible for wartime finances. Another thorn in her side is her cousin Abigail, a woman who was once gentry but now finds herself working in the household of the Queen. Abigail's low social position won't keep her down for long though because well......Abigail is kind of sneaky.

This one took me a while to get into. It's hard to care about the problems of a rich person let alone a member of the British royal family. For the first 20 minutes or so I sat in the cinema humming and hahhing about leaving but then imperceptibly the film started getting under my skin. Brilliant acting and sneaky machinations and backstabbing in a movie tends to do that. It's a lovely realisation when a film you expected to not care for has you grinning like a loon and wondering what nasty and sneaky thing is going to happen next. It's always great when a film treats a woman like a genuine human being too because it's fuckin ridiculously rare. No, they aren't just gentle creatures to be cooed over. They can be as snakey and devious as any cinematic baddie and it's genuinely refreshing to see female characters like this onscreen. Rachel Weisz's Sarah especially is some piece of work. Shakespearian through and through. 

All 3 leads are played to perfection. Weisz is hiss worthy in places and you can sense the fun she must have had playing the part. Emma Stone pulls off a solid English accent as the uber-sneaky Abigail. Seemingly fragile and demure and in reality anything but and a dab hand at using her sexuality as a weapon in a time when anything like that was frowned upon. The quieter moments where you can read the wash of emotion and plotting on her face are as good as anything she's ever done. She's an unapologetic social climber here and the juxtaposition of her innocent little face with her dark deeds makes for a fun watch. Olivia Colman as Queen Anne though, she owns the film. No surprise there. She's just a magnificent actress, one able to make us empathise with the worst kind of character. And Queen Anne most certainly is the worst, a beastly ruler looking at her plebs with disgust. But then Colman delivers a simple line, a blunt heartbreaking confession that instantly makes you feel awful for her and in a strange way begin to care about her. It's here the film comes together.

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The Favourite is a surprisingly straight forward watch, especially if you've seen Lanthimos' other films. As if to counteract the "normality" of the story he piles on the quirky & bizarre camerawork and it's here it might start to grate with some. It's like he knows he has a rep as a strange movie maker and feels the need to live up to that name but here it adds nothing to the story. Visual flourishes like that just feel excessive and detract from a story that really needs no propping up. Skullduggery rarely needs a dose of fisheye lense to be entertaining. The icky physicality of Lanthimos' debut feature 'Dogtooth' pops it's head up here too. Not as graphically as that film thankfully, more earthy than queasy but the amount of vomiting and masturbation may take some by surprise.

This won't be for everyone. It's unusual but it's always very entertaining and brilliantly acted. Expect to see it in the Oscar race in a couple of months.