Review of The Favourite (2018) by Nora B — 05 Jan 2019

Forewarned is forearmed they say so, be warned, the signs are there. Without giving any plot spoilers, let me alert you to some issues. In the cast list you will find Paul Swaine - check out the role name he has, and you will also find Mark Gatiss (of the cult TV series League of Gentleman fame) playing Lord Marlborough.

Haa ha...so now you know something about this presentation is going to be perverse or perverted. It doesn't help when in your cinema showing some back row raincoat wearer voices the subtext in the Board of Film Classification's rating, (15 in UK), which warns of bad language and, as per old Mr Lascivious' grubby voicing, "Strong Sex" .

Nevertheless, we watch on and are treated to the most sublime performance by Olivia Colman as Queen Anne. This is not to under rate the other two leading ladies but, this is where too greater faults are too obvious to avoid.

The actors are given the most dire and historically inaccurate, stupid and idiotic things to say. Modern day recourse to the f*** and c*** words are given to emanate from the mouths of well-borne ladies.

This is just preposterous. Then we have Lady Marlborough's cousin arriving in a stage coach and promptly doing a face-plant into the mud. Did she not have hands to stop her fall? Next, we see said cousin sent to the kitchens to work as the lowliest of skivvies.

She's set to giving the working kitchen flagstone floor a lime wash, (you what, you nincompoops? Lime wash is a form of painted wall covering). If they meant a 'lye wash' then again they are more stupid than can be believed.

Lye is the same as caustic soda as we know it and no one in their right minds would plunge their hands into this corrosive acid let along try to scrub a floor with it whilst the room was in active use.

Yes, the unhappy scrubber would get herself a chemical burn for her troubles but she would be better advised to use the usual soap stone instead - preferably when the floor was not in use. The script writers here merely suggest she should have used gloves.

For G's sake, what gloves might they have been at the beginning of the 18th century? Certainly not a pair of Marigolds. Stupid, stupid, stupid. As is a lot of this pantomime. The only shame is, we don't get to shout "He's behind you".

We just watch incredulous as the Queen is seen riding astride her horse with her lady companions also astride their nags. No side-saddles could be sourced or ladies able to ride side-saddle perhaps? We see rabbits galore.

..to what end I don't know. We see stupidly imagined lesbian sex scenes; we see Holland-style sex shop bawdy house rompings; we wonder, what the hell we've come to see? Pah. Stupid film. But, Olivia you were absolutely glorious.