The Favourite (2018)

The Favorite, the latest from the idiosyncratic Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) tells the story of the jockeying for power by two cousins (Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz) in the court England's Queen Anne in the early 1700's. The film is based partly on fact, and partly on scuttlebutt, some of it dating back to Queen Anne's reign. Anne is played by Olivia Coleman and it is a great performance, she has already won the Golden Globe for this role and I think it likely she will also take home the Oscar. Anne was really a fascinating woman, after seeing the movie I did a little bit of research on her, she seems to have been mostly regarded as a monarch of good intentions, if limited ability. She had 17 pregnancies, 12 of which resulted in still birth or miscarriage, and of those who survived the oldest lived only to the age of 11, the movie has an interesting (though not historically accurate) way of conveying her grief to the audience, though doubtless this experience put a tremendous emotional strain on her. In addition Anne was not a healthily woman, dead at 49 she had periods of paralysis, and at least as portrayed in the movie may have been a manic depressive. She also may have been lesbian or bisexual, at least that is rumored, she was famously and some say suspiciously close to her childhood friend Sarah Churchill, an ancestor of Sir. Winston's.

Sarah Churchill is played by Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone plays Sarah's cousin Abigail Masham, who was form the less fiscally fortunate side of the family. At first Sarah takes Abigail into the royal residence as an act of pity, but Abigail quickly works her way into the Queens good graces and sets herself up as chief rival for the queens affections. What follows is 18th century English dynasty by way of the 1980's television series Dynasty. It can be fun to watch, but it is also weird, and by the end deeply sad. For a period film of its setting The Favourite feels remarkably contemporary, not just in subject matter, but in tone and pacing, this ain't BBC formal, it's rawer, though never feels so stylized that it takes you out of the 18th Century. Strong performances by all three leads, a darkly comic drama of great finesse, a highlight of the movie year. ****