Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Mark
Gatiss, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn
Few European filmmakers have made as triumphant a transition to English language filmmaking as Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. After establishing himself as the figurehead of the 'Greek Weird Wave' movement with unsettling oddball films like Dogtooth and Alps, Lanthimos arguably found a more fitting home for his distinctive worldview in the Anglo-Saxon world with black as night comedies The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Now, with The Favourite, Lanthimos takes on that most British of genres, the period drama.
Sarah's position becomes compromised upon the arrival of her cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), a former member of the gentry now reduced to the status of a commoner thanks to her father's gambling ways. Employed to perform cleaning duties at the palace, Abigail is taken into the Queen's confidence when she puts together a poultice that soothes the monarch's chronic gout. As Abigail begins to take the place of Sarah in the Queen's affections, war breaks out between the two cousins, who resort to increasingly desperate measures to remove their respective rival from the picture.
What kept The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer constantly amusing in the face of their thematic bleakness was their downright absurdism. Neither of Lanthimos's previous English language films are set in a recognisable world, and the level of absurdism at play allows Lanthimos to indulge in some very black comedy, breaking taboos like the killing of children and animals and somehow playing such scenarios for belly laughs. Remove the rape jokes and the cutting jibes, and The Favourite isn't all that dissimilar to the average British costume drama, and in the final 30 minutes Lanthimos all but extinguishes the humour outright, resulting in a second rate political period drama.
It's probably not a coincidence that Lanthimos's weakest movie to date is the first that he's made without the collaboration of his regular co-writer Efthimis Filippou, and the first time he's directed someone else's script. The Favourite certainly isn't a case of Lanthimos becoming a director for hire, but it's lacking his indefinable presence to a noticeable degree.
The Favourite is on Disney+ UK/ROI
now.