Two stars. Rated R for strong sexual content, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang
Director Yorgos Lanthimos relishes his outré sensibilities, as survivors of Dogtooth, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and — most particularly — The Lobster can attest.
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| Having no desire to return to her formerly penniless existence, Abigail (Emma Stone, left) does her best to become a valuable part of Queen Anne's entourage ... and, after hours, an equally essential part of the queen's bed chamber. |
The Favourite is cut from the same cloth. While the (more or less) historically accurate setting lends bite to a script laced with delicious bile, snark, betrayal and Machiavellian palace intrigue, the laborious execution quickly becomes tedious. Rarely have 119 minutes passed so agonizingly slowly.
Lanthimos also delights in overwrought directorial self-indulgence, which — through excessive repetition — becomes insufferably annoying. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s fondness for panning “around corners” with a fish-eyed lens is one such affectation; the assortment of thumps, twangs and screeches that passes for a score is even worse. An extended presentation of two plucked notes on guitar (?) persists for what feels like forever, linking several lengthy scenes; one cannot help wanting to dash into the projection booth and eviscerate the audio track.
Tellingly, no composer is credited for anything that approaches actual music. No kidding.
A director who delights in calling so much attention to his tics, hiccups, quirks, whims and eccentricities does his film no favors. Lanthimos’ approach distracts and rips us out of the story; he’s like a little kid who, vying for attention, repeatedly screams, “Don’t pay attention to them; look at me! Look at me!”
Rubbish.
Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s script has its basis in fact, with events set during the first decade of the 18th century, midway through the reign of Great Britain’s Queen Anne. She was not a happy or healthy ruler, and was ill-suited to the throne; timidity and chronic ailments made her miserable. Despite 17 (!) pregnancies, she failed to produce a surviving heir, and became the final monarch from the House of Stuart.
Anne was quite pliable, and had the misfortune to rule just as Great Britain was embracing an acrimonious two-party political system, with the Whigs and Tories squabbling over how best to handle an ongoing war with France. It’s perhaps fortunate that Anne’s most trusted confidante was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who — it has been strongly suggested — essentially ruled from behind the scenes. Although clearly governed by her own agenda, and inclined toward decisions and acts that favored her husband — John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — Lady Sarah was intelligent, astute and decisive.
She also may have been Anne’s lover, and this is the film’s jumping-off point; Davis and McNamara boldly run with that sexual element.
Olivia Colman makes a hilariously pathetic Anne, forever pouting and whimpering — often in agony, due to her gouty limbs — but prone to mercurial, childish explosions of temper. Frankly, she’s a horror whose very presence terrorizes her legion of servants and understaff, all of whom visibly breathe a sigh of relief when she departs a room.
Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) is the only person able to control her, via a calculated blend of intimidation, guile and intimate affection. More than once, though, we wonder if Sarah’s fondness is genuine, or a superficial means to an end. Tantalizingly, Weisz keeps her character ambiguous. At times, Sarah lectures Anne like a parent scolding a dim-witted child; then, just as quickly, Sarah becomes tender and nurturing.
And physical. These were earthy, vulgar and appallingly unhygienic times, and Lanthimos — and his scripters — delight in rubbing our noses in all manner of base behavior. The tone is set early on, when this palace melodrama’s third principal player — Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) — shares a crowded coach with, among others, a young rake who leers at her while visibly masturbating.
Be advised: That’s a mere taste of what’s to come.
Abigail has fallen on hard times through no fault of her own, after her father’s ill-advised financial speculations left the family penniless. She has traveled to the palace in the hope that her cousin, Sarah, might offer some form of employment. At first waspishly dismissing Abigail to the skin-flensing drudge of kitchen scullery work, Sarah softens when the highly educated younger woman — wise in the ways of helpful herbs — supplies a poultice that eases Anne’s agony.
Sarah, genuinely grateful, makes Abigail a chamber maid.
The latter, relieved by this tiny first step on the road back to her previously privileged existence, determines to continue the journey. We see it in Stone’s conniving gaze: particularly the way in which her friendly smile vanishes — and is replaced by something much harder — the nanosecond its recipient glances elsewhere.
Sensing that Anne might respond to somebody less severe than Sarah, Abigail boldly curries favor. And because she’s willing to use her body as a means to the desired end, Anne is delighted to share her bed with this younger, (apparently) gentler companion.
Which — needless to say — doesn’t sit well with Sarah, who does her best to rid the palace of this grasping, social-climbing interloper. All while Abigail does her best to stay put, thank you very much. Even if that means playing spy for Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult), First Earl of Oxford, and the Tory leader. Up to this point, Harley’s access to the queen has been blocked by Sarah, who favors the aristocratic Whigs.
Abigail and Harley share no mutual fondness, but each recognizes the other as useful.
Abigail, Robert Harley and pretty much all the other key players in what becomes a diabolical struggle over power and taxes — and that financially ruinous war with the French — also are actual historical figures. The sexual triangle between the three women, however, is likely fabricated and enhanced according to Lanthimos’ exaggerated sensibilities. (Although, in fairness, who really knows?)
The presentation is a study in contrasts, most visibly between the women — who generally look like women — and the flamboyantly rouged, blinged-out men who run around in massive white wigs, ruffles, lace, leggings and three-inch heels, and look more feminine than their female companions. Costume designer Sandy Power obviously had a ball with all this wretched excess, most notably with Harley’s peacock-level finery.
Aristocratic debauchery also is on display, as these noble gentlemen — and female companions, who usually aren’t their wives — cheer on duck and lobster races, while gorging themselves on wine and exotic fruits: all while remaining oblivious to the peasants starving outside the palace gates, of course. The epitome of disgusting decadence comes during a “game” that finds the men pelting one of there own — who’s naked — with blood oranges.
(I’m reminded of the similarly self-indulgent Peter Greenaway, an equally bizarre filmmaker whose over-the-top sensibilities peaked — I hope — with 1991’s Prospero’s Books. But he’s still making movies, most of which never seem to hit theaters, so one cannot be certain.)
Then there’s the matter of Anne’s 17 pet rabbits, each of them named for one of her doomed children.
Affairs of state are secondary; the palace serves mostly as a playground reserved for those granted access. The scandalous hedonism is distasteful, as is intended; we instinctively despise these privileged people, who behave this way simply because they want to … and because they can.
Which pretty much sums up Lanthimos’ approach to filmmaking: He indulges himself — at the expense of even halfway reasonable narrative structure — because he can. And because (thus far) studios keep giving him money.
There’s no question that this was a highly volatile and intriguing chapter of British history, populated by fascinating characters who skirmished aggressively behind the scenes. But Davis and McNamara’s lines haven’t near the bite that made (for example) 1968’s The Lion in Winter so delectable, and this film’s sexual hijinks — never rising above the crude and sordid — quickly become tedious.
Mostly, though, there’s simply nobody to like — or sympathize with — in this palace. It’s hard to spend two hours with such loathsome sybarites, even amid such tempestuous geo-political surroundings.
I note that this film (thus far) has garnered an 8.3 at IMDB, which is frankly ludicrous. I can’t help feeling that this is one of those pictures which — although critically lauded — will be dismissed with snorts of contempt by most everybody else. It’s like Lanthimos made a film for the characters within the film itself.
Or — back in the day, when people still read books — like when decorum encouraged members of the social scene, who wished to appear informed and “with it,” to adorn their coffee tables with highly regarded tomes of the moment … which they’d never actually read.
Frankly, I wish this film had remained in my “never seen” category.
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