The Favourite (2018)


Spoiler Free
Comedy/ Drama/ Biography
Rated 15
Out now for home viewing

I have such mixed feelings on The Favourite's director Yorgos Lanthimos. Dogtooth was weird and unsettling, The Lobster was weird and amusing, The Killing of a Sacred Deer was weird and yet somehow mind numbingly boring despite a subject matter that promised so much. Alright having just written that I have realised my one solid thought on Lanthimos is that he, or at least his films, are weird.

The Favourite looked great in the trailer, but we all know that trailers, like every internet date ever, are lying bastards. The Favourite looked funny, engaging, even (gasp) bordering on accessible, but then it won a load of awards and I thought nope, it’s going to be a journalistic jizz fest of chin stroking. At least I assume you stroke your chin when it has jizz running down it like warm, salty bleach. You definitely don’t lick your lips, not before the lying bastard has paid for dinner, anyway.

Olivia Colman is a Comedy God, everyone knows that. If you didn’t know Olivia Colman is delirious divinity you’re an idiot and I’m not swiping right on you. Or left. I forget which way it’s supposed to be as I’m not internet dating. Again. Rachel Weisz is always wonderful and Emma Stone clearly has a good agent and a keen eye for a gem. Together, eventually, they might repay the horror of La La Land. Stone’s a left field choice for The Favourite but she’s very good in it.

I haven’t seen a Yorgos Lanthimos film which hasn’t been well acted, but then it’s hard to tell when they’re all so bloody weird.
Plot! You lot probably care about the plot. Queen Colman of England is spoilt and bonkers and Weisz and Stone compete for her affection and the benefits which come with that. Before you say it’s really sexist that I don’t remember the names of the characters "because they’re women" and therefore insignificant to me-  honestly I do it watching everything. Just ask my ex girlfriends whatshername and that other one. They’ll tell you.

It is rather a complex comedy, The Favourite balances the contemporary spaghetti junction of power, historical setting and gender. Rather appropriately, in fact wonderfully, The Favourite makes a minefield of a field of minefields. It is weird. Wickedly weird. Dramatic, odd, amusing and yes, accessible. This is a Downtown Abbey* for those who love dark comedy. I really enjoyed it.

The Favourite is a creatively honest look at the petty squabbling between those for whom power and perception are most important.

Bedsit it? The Favourite should teach us all a lesson on how to spot honesty. Learn, or be taught the hard way paying for dinner with lecherous lipstick. Lying bastard.

I enjoyed The Favourite much more than I expected, to the giddy heights of 8/10.

*I don’t watch Downtown but it has fingering in it, right?

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