Review: The Favourite

The Favourite (15)

Ireland/UK/USA 2018 119 mins  Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos  Cast: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Mark Gatiss

There are no prizes for guessing that post-Weinstein Hollywood is about to unleash a slew of dramas in which historical figures are repurposed as great feminist icons for the #MeToo and #TimesUp generation, with much heavily laboured underlining of their contemporary resonance. But it’s safe to predict that not one of these noble patriarchy-bashers will be anywhere near as much fun as Yorgos Lanthimos’s gleefully ribald Restoration-era comedy, which relegates men to the background as three equally magnificent female characters are unleashed in a handsomely staged period setting filled with piss, shit, vomit, fucking and swearing. If you’re averse to what is so coyly referred to as the C-word, you’d probably better steer clear, so enthusiastically is this bandied about. But if you’ve always yearned to see an obese naked toff pelted with soft fruit, or a courtier commencing a letter of apology with the words “You cunt!”, The Favourite is most definitely the scabrously funny costume drama for you.

We’re in the early 18th century. Queen Anne (Colman) is a capricious, childlike monarch, who’s a martyr to gout and has only the vaguest grasp of events beyond her palace. The power behind the throne is wily, sharp-witted and acid-tongued Sarah (Weisz), Duchess of Marlborough: a confidante and gatekeeper who will do anything necessary to pleasure the needy, dependent queen in order to manipulate her into continuing to prosecute the financially ruinous war against the French, led by Sarah’s bellicose hubby (Gatiss). Her chief opponent is Robert Harley (Hoult), a perpeturally apoplectic, heavily rouged fop of a landowner and Tory minister who objects to ever-rising taxes. Enter Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Stone), who fell on hard times after her dissolute father lost her in a card game when she was 15. An accomplished schemer who can multi-task impressively by plotting while administering a handjob, Abigail sets about the process of usurpation, proving every bit as adept with her tongue as her rival for the mercurial monarch’s affections.

It’s easy to appreciate why The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer director Yorgos Lanthimos was attracted to the deliciously obscene, frequently absurdist script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, which essentially does the All About Eve thing in frocks and powdered wigs. Superbly photographed by Robbie Ryan, using ultra-wide angle lenses to capture every photon of the Barry Lyndon-style natural light, The Favourite is as lavishly staged as any conventional costume drama. But there’s no shortage of authentic filth (in all meanings of the term), with dialogue that verges on the Pythonesquely scatological at times. When a maid surveys her squalid surroundings and sniffs: “They shit in the streets round here – political commentary they call it,” it’s hard not to be reminded of “He must be a king. He hasn’t got shit all over him.”

It’s a rare film that can be said to sideline the talents of Mark Gatiss – and Nicholas Hoult is certainly on fine form beneath his preposterous wig and slap – but The Favourite is dominated by a trio of great female performances. Rachel Weisz clearly relishes all her great dialogue during the viperous Sarah’s jousts with Emma Stone’s damaged yet resourceful Abigail, whose outwardly sweet nature belies a steely determination to pull herself out of the scullery and whorehouse by any means necessary. As the third point on the love triangle, Olivia Colman’s duck-racing, rabbit-collecting Anne could easily have been a two-dimensional figure of fun, but she invests the character with real emotional power, especially when we learn that each of her 17 bunnies represents a lost child.

If you’re looking for nods to our times, Her Maj’s rousing, meaningless “We must fight for what we fight for” speech echoes down the centuries to the era of Make America Great Again and Take Back Control, but Lanthimos and his writers wisely avoid overloading their film with winks at the audience, despite sailing close to the wind on occasion. The funny ‘breakdancing at court’ sequence, for example, is a rare exception to the general rule established by the dire Plunkett and Macleane that interpolating modern youth culture into period drama is watch-through-your-fingers embarrassingly awful. And while Sarah and Abigail are each adept at outwitting men in a male-dominated world, they’re motivated entirely by self-interest rather than some proto-feminist crusade.