Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz
Rated R, 119 minutes
“The Favourite” may be about a monarch, but rather than a criticism of people in power, it’s a condemnation of those on the periphery of power, the wheedlers and flatterers who charm their way to the top only to find themselves with nowhere to go but down. It’s an altogether surprising (and surprisingly funny) movie, with a unique and subversive vision of the history of the English crown, but as engrossing as its two hours are, the movie feels unfinished.
Set in the early 18th century, “The Favourite” follows two cousins as they compete for the affections of the gout-stricken, doddering Queen Anne (Olivia Colman, “Broadchurch”). On one side is Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz, “The Constant Gardener”), the Queen’s only friend and confidante, a noblewoman wealthy beyond belief through her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough; on the other side is Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone, “La La Land”), a former noblewoman fallen on hard times thanks to her careless father, now reduced to seeking servant work. Sarah gives Abigail a job in the palace out of pity, but almost overnight Abigail gets herself in the Queen’s good graces, in the process taking away some of the attention that has previously belonged to Sarah alone.
What begins as a mild, even playful, game of tug-of-war quickly turns vicious, with Sarah and Abigail using all manner of subterfuge, from telling outright lies to intercepting mail to lacing tea with poison. In particular, Abigail shows a frightening lack of scruples, made even more disturbing by the sweetly innocent face she puts on around the Queen. Abigail may be down on her luck, but she’s restless and vengeful; she spends her wedding night distractedly plotting her next move.
Already responsible for some of the more bizarre movies of the last decade, Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster”) treats this story of ambition and moral rot with visuals that make the palace feel both extravagant and maddening. When he’s not using fish-eye lenses to literally warp our view, Lanthimos composes his shots with a strikingly off-kilter sensibility; he’s unafraid to fill the better part of a frame with a window that washes out the scene in white light, or to let a frame disappear in total darkness. Then there are the movie’s frequent cross-dissolves and overlaid images, which force us repeatedly to choose what to look at, as though it were the movie’s viewer, not the Queen of England, choosing a favorite.
Not to be outshined by this stylistic flair are the film’s three lead actresses. Olivia Colman, long underappreciated, is the film’s standout, imbuing Queen Anne with equal parts childish petulance and tragic regret. As the subject of Sarah and Abigail’s calculated affections, Colman never indicates whether Queen Anne knows that she’s being used; either she’s pathetically unaware, or she’s aware and allows the game to continue anyway, which might be even more pathetic. In her saddest moments we laugh at her absurdity; in her happiest moments we pity her.
Weisz and Stone also deliver tense, startling performances, but their fight over the Queen’s affection, the movie’s focal point, is surprisingly underwhelming, thanks to the script. Not only does their conflict lack a true climax, but the movie doubles down on this lack of resolution by hinting at explosive confrontations that we never see. In an early scene, for instance, Sarah fires a pistol at Abigail point blank without first explaining that the pistol is unloaded; as Abigail collapses from fear, Sarah calmly jokes that they’ll have to keep the unloaded-gun prank in mind for later. The foreshadowing is so obvious as to be heavy-handed, but it’s foreshadowing of an event that never actually comes.
The result of this disregard for storytelling convention may be a movie that feels subversive and new, but it’s also deeply unsatisfying, so much so that the movie’s lack of closure is a distraction from the ending it does have, which boasts some of the most unsettling images put to celluloid this year. That’s always the risk with subversive filmmaking, of course—that in ignoring the norms of the medium, the movie will forfeit its ability to entertain. “The Favourite” is still more entertaining than most movies, but like its characters, it’s needlessly prepared to die on a small hill.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 12/14/18.