Review: The Favourite

Purportedly the story of 1700s British royal lust, jealousy, ambition, and betrayal under the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), a rather pathetically petulant, often depressed, and frequently ailing monarch. Rachel Weisz is the stern Lady Sarah, the pants-wearing lady-in-waiting and lover of the Queen. The harsh, bitchy Lady Sarah is about to meet her match in her own lowly cousin Abigail (Emma Stone), who quickly becomes the Queen’s new confidante, and even bed companion. This one’s a quick study, it seems. Nicholas Hoult plays one of the resident wig-wearing fops, who has a rather bitchy repartee with Abigail, who he wants to use as his spy (Kids today would likely call them ‘frenemies’).

You’re probably not going to like me today.

I’m not a fan of corset and frilly dress movies, but period movies about royalty are usually a little closer to the mark for me. There’s several good movies about Elizabeth I, for instance, and I did enjoy “Her Majesty Mrs. Brown” and “The Queen” among several others. Unfortunately, this 2018 Oscar winner from director Yorgos Lanthimos (acquired tastes like “Dogtooth” and “The Lobster”) is cock-eyed, fish-lensed, off-putting, and a complete and utter disaster. Scripted by Deborah Davis (her sole credit in any capacity to date) and Tony McNamara (a veteran writer for Aussie TV, including the creator of “Doctor Doctor” of all things), I think it’s one of the ten worst films of the year, and I’m shocked the Academy saw fit to bestow upon it 4 wins and 6 nominations. It even won Best Lead Actress for the clearly Supporting Actress Olivia Colman. I’m not fooling around today, folks. I hated this movie so damn much.

I must admit I wasn’t expecting this to be so comedically inclined, but after the decent opening six minutes or so, I didn’t find myself laughing. In fact, I found myself wanting to turn away altogether from most of it. The costumes are excellent, but you don’t get marks for that in a costume comedy-drama, it’s a pre-requisite. The most immediate eye-sore here is Lanthimos’ idiotic decision to have cinematographer Robbie Ryan (“Philomena”, “Marriage Story”) use fish-eye lenses frequently throughout the film. Yeah, it’s meant to show a skewed/distorted view of these supposedly regal and proper characters, but isn’t that what acting and screenwriting are for? Instead, all it does is draw your attention to the artifice, the technique being employed and therefore you’re removed from the story and characters. I kept waiting for the late Terry Jones to turn up for ‘Find the Fish’, ala “The Meaning of Life”. It’s got to be the year’s most irritating photography for sure (The wide-angle shots are also infuriating, not to mention very poorly done. They don’t work for the scenes they’re framing at all). Mr. Ryan shows himself to have an eye for shadows, but it’s all for nought with that stupid fish-eye and ineffectual wide-screen nonsense going on.

As for the acting, Emma Stone is surprisingly solid in what really is the lead role, in fact I can probably say it’s the best performance I’ve seen her give. I’m far from a fan of hers, but it’s a shame such good work is wasted in such an awful film. Meanwhile, Nicholas Hoult is probably the best of the hammy fops in the film. He overdoes it like almost everyone and everything else here, but at least he’s entertaining from time to time (Mind you, his presence is a constant reminder that this film is a poor man’s “Dangerous Liaisons”). However, Rachel Weisz never escapes her clichéd ‘lesbian = butch = bitch = wears pants’ role, and is for once alarmingly uncharismatic, wooden, and tedious. Worst of all is an Oscar-winning Olivia Colman (not my favourite actress to begin with), overplaying her sad character to such a degree of grotesque pitifulness that she is unbearable and unendurably pathetic. She won an Oscar for wearing one petulant facial expression playing a pathetic loser with a crown. I can’t possibly believe the real Queen was anything like this sad, silly frump. Speaking of pathetic, what in the hell is going on with the music in this film? There’s no credited composer, but whoever the fuck that is scratching away at a (I think) violin should’ve been taken out and shot. It’s a constant irritation in a film that already had way too much annoying me, and is another thing pulling you out of what could’ve (in sensible hands) been interesting historical material. I’d be shocked to learn that this treatment was in any way close to historically accurate (The filmmakers openly and cheerfully admit that they weren’t concerned with historical accuracy. Great, don’t make a historical film then, yeah?). At the very least, I certainly didn’t believe any of it was true, and definitely feel the director and/or screenwriters are an ill-fit for the genre.

There’s one or two funny bits here and there, such as Stone’s slightly errant attempt at pigeon shooting. On the whole though, this is one of the most tedious films to feature Sapphic content and historical figures I’ve ever seen. The central dynamics are actually rather juvenile and not very believable. It’s not interesting, it’s not sexy, it’s surely not terribly historically accurate, and outside of the production design, it’s in no way well-made.

Wrongheaded fictionalised historical nonsense (historians don’t generally believe the Queen had intimate relations with her female friends) with a filmmaker’s style getting in the way of everything. Poorly shot, unevenly acted, frankly grotesque, horribly overdone, and utterly tedious. A grotesquely comic view of aristocracy? Sorry, but the likes of Monty Python and “Blackadder” have already done that years ago, and much better. Hard pass from me for this wannabe Peter Greenaway flick from a director who more closely resembles Lars von Trier at his worst. Feel free to disagree with me on this one, I’m clearly in an extreme minority here.

Rating: D