Review of The Favourite (2018) by Daniel S — 28 Dec 2018

I love the trailer for this film. Funny, acerbic, and refreshingly different for a period piece, it raised my eyebrows, until I saw the director: Yorgos Lanthimos, the director of The Lobster, a film I loathed that also had a great trailer.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I watched The Favourite. The (broad strokes) true story of two women fighting for the affections and favour of Queen Anne in the 18th Century, the film delivered on the promises the trailer made.

All three women (Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and especially Olivia Colman) produce wonderful performances, the music is used to great effect in building the world and supporting the scenes, and the funny parts of the trailer are all just as wonderful with more context.

The story told over the first 3/4 of the film is engaging and told with great energy and inventiveness, but then once the story is complete, the film burbles onward, energy spent, and ends with much more of a whimper than the early part of the film would suggest.

Also, whilst the idea of three engaging, complex characters at the core of the film is of course a welcome one, no character stands out as being someone to root for. The Queen is a tragic figure, but is there to be manipulated more than having much agency of her own, and the two women fighting for her trust are both as conniving and heartless as each other.

Without the emotional investment in any of the characters, I felt like an impassive onlooker, watching things happen but not really caring about them. All in all, whilst it suffers from similar issues (strong beginning, weak ending), it stands as a strong improvement on The Lobster.