The Favourite

Overrated? Most assuredly, but utterly engaging from beginning to end. Not Yorgos' most humorous piece, but technically sound and brilliantly acted.

Final rating:★★★ - I liked it. Would personally recommend you give it a go.

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The Favourite is one of the most acclaimed movies of last year, receiving multiple nominations at dozens of awards shows and winning a whole bunch of them (2nd most awarded film of 2018, behind Roma). Being a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’ style, I couldn’t be happier for him, and I was now even more excited to watch what he produced and directed. This movie is a classic example of an Oscars’ tradition of sorts. A lot of audience members make their mission to watch every Best Picture nominee before the big night, and there’s always one film that people fail to grasp on why did it get so much praise? Why are critics all around the world absolutely loving what audiences perceive as an “okay” time at the theater, but which contains a long, weird and maybe even dull (for some) story?

Well, first of all, this is technically a masterpiece. I mean, every single technical aspect is worthy of recognition. The production and set design are gorgeously eyegasmic. The score is unusual for a period piece like this, but it weirdly works, as it continuously elevates the tension between the three main characters and helps the story flow with an always conspicuous, treacherous feeling. Even the cinematography and the plays with candlelight offer some pretty neat scenes. However, and prepare to be surprised, the costume design steals the show from all the other achievements. This is coming from a guy who has utterly no interest in this particular matter and who rarely talks about it, so I’m as surprised as you are.

It’s not due to the costumes being pretty or appropriate to the time period. Almost every movie that tackles these times nail the costume design, but only a few can tell a character arc through it. Even less are capable of embodying the whole screenplay like this Oscar-bait does. Our protagonists have distinct journeys, but their ends all have similarities. One way of understanding the story is throu...

Hugely entertaining film from start to finish, with amazing performances from the three lead women. Emma Stone proves that once again she's not just a pretty face as the conniving and troubled Abigail, Rachel Weisz is always on form as the controlling and vindictive Sarah and Olivia Coleman deserved the Oscar as the childish and sickly Queen Anne. Nicholas Hoult's foppish rogue Harley steals every scene he is in.

Yorgos Lanthimos once again has made a beautifully shot film using mostly natural light. I can't overstate that this film looks gorgeous. Many times over I thought of Barry Lyndon, but with tonnes of humour, foul language, and no Ryan O'Neal to destroy the soul of the film.

I originally gave this 9/10 because I didn't like the use of fish-eye lens, but I couldn't stop thinking of how much I enjoyed it so I bumped it up to 10.

Best film I have seen in a very long time.

Fans of Yorgos Lanthimos will love it

A setback for women? How can it set women back to prove that women fart and vomit and hate and love and do all the things men do? All human beings are the same. We're all multifaceted, many-layered, disgusting and gorgeous and powerful and weak and filthy and brilliant. That's what's nice. It doesn't make women an old-fashioned thing of delicacy.

• Olivia Colman; "The Favourite Blows Up Gender Politics With the Year's Most Outrageous Love Triangle" (Tatiana Siegel); The Hollywood Reporter (November 14, 2018)

The Favourite, the seventh feature from Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, is a film that eschews both convention and expectation. On the other hand, it's also Lanthimos's most accessible by a country mile. Imagine, if you will, a narrative combining Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950), Ingmar Bergman's Viskningar och rop (1975), and Mark Waters's Mean Girls (2004) filtered through the aesthetic sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract (1992), and Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons (1988), topped off with a dash of Luis Buñuel at his most socially satirical, and you'll be some way towards imagining this bizarre and uncategorisable film from a director with as unique and distinctive a voice as you're likely to find in world cinema. A savage morality play, a camp comedy of manners, a Baroque tragedy, an allegorical study of the corruptive nature of power – it's all of these and yet none of them. I haven't seen Lanthimos's first two films, O kalyteros mou filos (2001) and Kinetta (2005), but I adored Kynodontas (2009), as difficult as it was to watch. I was a little indifferent to Alpeis (2011), but I loved The Lobster (2015), his blackest comedy thus far. His last film, however, The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) did very little for me, as I felt it offered nothing we hadn't seen in his previous work. So I came to...

Some wounds do not close; I have many such. One just walks around with them and sometimes one can feel them filling with blood.

The Favourite is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. It stars Olivia Colman, Rachael Weisz, Emma Stone, Faye Daveney, James Smith, Mark Gatiss, Willem Dalby and Nicholas Hoult.

In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne (Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah (Weisz), governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail (Stone), arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah.

A critical darling with awards and nominations to match, The Favourite, to me at least, is something of an acquired taste. Firstly it should be noted that as a history lesson it's pure bunkum, so much so I wondered if Lanthimos is actually Mel Gibson. Though to be fair to Lanthimos, he never hid from the fact he and his writers were pretty much making it up for entertainment purpose.

The craft on show is top level, with three high quality lead lady performances giving their all for the director. Lanthimos also has some nifty camera tricks up his sleeve, it's clear that this is a talent to follow for those so inclined to his off kilter type of film making. Helps, too, that the costuming and set designs are also from the top draw. It's hard to fault from a production standpoint.

Narratively the pic is pulsing with parliamentary politics that blends with royal shenanigans. Yet ultimately the prime concern is about the battle for Queen Anne's soul between Sarah and Abigail. This consistently remains fascinating, even as Lanthimos continues to sex things up and pitches black comedy alongside the tragic thrum at the core.

It's an odd mix of a film that I personally don't think works as a whole, and with the finale a crushing disappointment, it leaves one in awe and yet also unsatisfied. 7/10

Queen Anne was one of the few British monarchs still to have had her story committed to film and this was the Oscar winning result. Olivia Coleman stands out as the cantankerous and temperamental last of the Stuart's to reign; but otherwise the performances fall rather flat. The rivalry - and sometimes pretty vulgar visualisation of it - between Abigail & Sarah Churchill doesn't quite work for me and the foppish Nicholas Hoult is a parody of something from "Blackadder". It moves along quite sharpishly, and the craft skills behind it all are second to none, but I can't help feel that the subject matter - and the triplet of three strong women in leading roles earned it more attention that the film actually merited.