The Favourite

Greek direc­tor Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos is an exor­cist of cin­e­ma. He has the abil­i­ty to remove the vapours of spir­it from all those who dare step in front of his cam­era. Sud­den­ly, dia­logue is shorn of its emo­tion­al nuance. Bod­i­ly move­ment is no longer sup­ple and nat­ur­al. The soul has been extin­guished in the filmmaker’s search for a pur­er form of human feel­ing. He has employed this trick over and over, and with dimin­ish­ing returns. What appeared rev­o­lu­tion­ary in 2009’s Dog­tooth came across as tired schtick by the time 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer came around.

With The Favourite, Lan­thi­mos press­es down the ​‘hard reset’ but­ton just halfway, allow­ing at least some of the spir­it back into the frame. We are whisked back the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Col­man) cir­ca the 1710s. There is the per­fume of cos­tume par­ty the­atrics to pro­ceed­ings, a spark of bawdy bur­lesque which under­pins the peri­od dra­ma. Fish-eye lens­es cap­ture and warp the choco­late brown wood­en inte­ri­ors, while the cor­ri­dors, bed­rooms and ban­quet­ing halls are illu­mi­nat­ed with flick­er­ing can­dles and torches.

As the sto­ry kicks in, the director’s unique touch is pal­pa­ble, from the school­yard use of obscen­i­ty to a mer­ri­ly cav­a­lier atti­tude towards cul­tur­al anachro­nism – rev­ellers line up for a for­mal dance and start to body pop.

Emma Stone’s Abi­gail arrives on the scene, fresh from being tossed into a bog. She has fall­en on hard times, and decides to leach on her loose fam­i­ly ties to Rachel Weisz’s Lady Sarah Marl­bor­ough, the queen’s hand and back­room influ­encer. What is intro­duced as an inno­cent reunion of wily souls gets nasty very swift­ly, as each vie for the atten­tions of a monarch who has been near-crip­pled by gout and self-pity. The film is very fun­ny until sud­den­ly it’s not.

The Favourite might be the first gen­uine­ly upset­ting Lan­thi­mos film (it’s maybe too ear­ly to describe it as ​“mov­ing”), and that is square­ly down to Colman’s aston­ish­ing­ly frag­ile per­for­mance. Her Anne is a piti­ful wretch, alone in her own pri­vate world and sur­round­ed by toad­ies and schemers. Many pro­fess to love her, but she knows that they do so for the immense pow­er she wields. They would plunge the knife into her back in half a heartbeat.

Although nom­i­nal­ly a fig­ure of fun, Col­man piles on the lay­ers of trau­ma and neu­ro­sis, mak­ing her sple­net­ic out­bursts feel at once log­i­cal and entire­ly mys­te­ri­ous. In one scene, she looks from a win­dow and sees a small cham­ber orches­tra of sweet pre-teens play­ing their hearts out. In the harsh­est pos­si­ble terms, she insists they with­draw from her lawn immediately.

This is a his­tor­i­cal film in back­ground detail only. Euro­pean cam­paigns, polit­i­cal infight­ing, the rush of bed­room duck rac­ing are all extra­ne­ous to what is a very fine film about the bit­ter ten­sions of a three-way rela­tion­ship. Its obser­va­tions about the weak­er point of the tri­an­gle cav­ing to the stronger two sides are beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed, and it feels as if Lan­thi­mos has turned a cor­ner in terms of nar­row­ing his focus onto very human con­cerns rather than (as he has in the past) lean­ing on arcane philosophy.

Add in Sandy Powell’s sump­tu­ous cos­tumes and you’ve got a Lan­thi­mos crossover film in which the direc­tor has his crazy cake, eats it, then throws it up. Again.