‘The Favourite’ offers a royal romp for Venice

One the fall’s major Oscar hopefuls, and featuring a wealth of juicy actress performances, The Favourite is appeasing critics left and right. 

Lauded performances from Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz plus raves over the period detail, cinematography and costume design – on top of the rip-roaring screenplay, the film is already looking like well, a festival favourite. 

It’s early 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah. Sarah takes Abigail under her wing and Abigail sees a chance at a return to her aristocratic roots. As the politics of war become quite time consuming for Sarah, Abigail steps into the breach to fill in as the Queen’s companion. Their burgeoning friendship gives her a chance to fulfil her ambitions and she will not let woman, man, politics or rabbit stand in her way.

The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney: “The last frock opera to break the mold to this degree was Sofia Coppola’s underrated Marie Antoinette. The seductive use of natural lighting from the earliest scenes, as the sun streams in through the palace windows, or as candlelight flickers across the actors’ faces at night, recalls another unorthodox period satire, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. But it’s the vibrantly alive performances and the mischievous spark of the dialogue that will expand Lanthimos’ audience beyond his previous two English-language films, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both equally distinctive works but for more rarefied tastes.”

Time’s Stephanie Zacharek says: “Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has drawn acclaim with a handful of love ’em or hate ’em pictures, including Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). At his best, he’s a solid deadpan satirist, like a more acidic Buñuel; at his worst, he’s a cinematic sadist, seemingly seeking only to wish you and yours a very, very bad day. But it would be a mistake to prejudge Lanthimos’ latest film, The Favourite, playing in competition in Venice, on the basis of what he’s done before. The Favourite is a wicked delight, a fantastic little cupcake of a movie laced with thistle frosting. This period drama or comedy, depending on your mood, is sort-of based on fact, gorgeous to look at, and features a trio of marvelous performances, from Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and English actress Olivia Colman. If you’re into treachery, manipulative erotic escapades, and flamboyant early-18th-century fit-and-flare shooting outfits for ladies (courtesy of costume goddess Sandy Powell), The Favourite is the movie for you.”

The Film Stage’s Leonardo Goi: “A triumph of production and costume design (courtesy of Fiona Crombie and Sandy Powell, respectively), The Favourite is a joy for the eyes. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography alternates camera spins and fisheye lenses, capturing some stupefying interiors and the distorted perspective of solitary royals populating them – mirroring, to some degree, the visual experiments Lanthimos had toyed with in The Killing of A Sacred Deer. Endlessly quotable and serendipitously timely — all the more so considering the whole project was conceived nine years ago — The Favourite is a zany, piercing close-up on three women so replete with swagger as to reduce their male counterparts to disposable extras. “Your mascara is running,” Lady Sarah tells a furious and heavily made-up Harley. “If you need to fix yourself, we can resume this later.””

First Showing’s Alex Billington: “The best part of The Favourite, which had me laughing often, is that it’s playing on the idea of how decadent and absurd royal life was in the past. We’re talking about duck races, mud baths, throwing fruit at naked servants, extravagant parties, getting upset for no reason, doing stupid things without any real consequence, torturing people for no reason other than they were disloyal (whether true or not). Lanthimos puts all of this in there, and goes all out, making the characters act as if it’s all serious all for our amusement. And I said, I believe this all probably did happen, it’s not a stretch to imagine royalty being ridiculous because they could. That’s how things were back then, and most of the film is just indulging in this – extensively. This is the most enjoyable part of the film, and it makes for wickedly satisfying entertainment – at least for most of the film.”