In his latest film, director Yorgos Lanthimos pairs trademark absurdist comedy with the world of 18th century England to ravishing effect, creating one of the best pictures of the year. The Favourite revolves around Queen Anne, and two advisors, played by Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, who compete for her attention as Britain fights France overseas. The women are both skilled manipulators, and increasingly depend on violence to get the upper hand in the chess game that defines crown politics.
On a technical and narrative level, The Favourite borrows heavily from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, which revolutionized period cinematography through natural lighting and wide angle shots. Lanthimos likewise flips genre conventions on their head—he employs a fisheye lens in a way that’s unsettling yet entrancing, and relies on the sun and candles to light his sets, as Lyndon did. Dolly tracks are long and luxurious, but they also often melt away into more unstable, handheld-seeming tracking shots. Veteran costume designer Sandy Powell continues to find ways to reinvent royal dress—the patterns on the midriff sections Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone’s formal attire are almost anachronistically simple, yet they blend perfectly with familiar lace. I loved the addition of fur drops on the Queen’s coats, and the billowing quality to the sleeves and trains she wore that suggested puffy cream. Similarly, the production design—to the extent that there was any, as The Favourite was almost exclusively shot on location at Hatfield House in England—was sumptuous and color-coordinated, with an affinity for golds, browns and blacks.
The narrative content is elevated by aesthetics, but stands on its own as the one of the best scripts in recent memory. The characters’ interactions are consistently laugh-out-loud funny, in the vein of Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship but more exaggerated. Just a few highlights: Stone being shot at with a gun by Weisz, and also being pegged with books by Weisz; Stone flirting dangerously with Joe Alwyn’s lord then making faces when she realizes she might have gone too far; Nicholas Hoult’s generous use of the c-word. It’s all quite slapstick, but elevated by biting aristocratic articulation.
The reason all of these almost absurd yet informed and relevant scenes work is because they serve a narrative of deception and self-promotion that almost speaks to the political workings of today’s White House. There is such unabashed hatred and nonconformity to etiquette—which, in the film is wisely always committed behind closed doors or out of public view—that mirrors the current presidential administration’s tweets and bullying and condescension.
It helps that literally everyone is perfectly cast, from Olivia Colman, playing the Queen—she’s depressing, ugly, and completely pitiable—to Weisz, who is acerbic and frightening while never actually having to change much of her line delivery (it’s in the moments in between her lines that we see such mastery of facial contortions) to Stone, my favorite, who up until now, despite my love for her, I wasn’t sure could move beyond 21st century roles. She can, and is pretty damn good at an accent, genuine and conniving simultaneously in a way that isn’t contradictory, only complex. Alwyn doesn’t have much screen time but fills it well, and Hoult is delightful in his constant anger and petty grievances.
Yorgos Lanthimos went more mainstream with this film than his previous work, but The Favourite is by no means commercial. The fervor and energy it releases are splendidly off-kilter, even if only the last scene truly diverts from reality. I’m still thinking about that closing sequence, in fact, which is impossible to explain even if I gave away the rest of the film’s plot, but certainly makes The Favourite a new kind of costume drama, one warranting at least one view, if not many.
Fergus Campbell is a freshman in Columbia College.