When I heard Dogtooth & The Lobster’s director new film was a period piece about Queen Anne, my initial thought was ‘how will we get a typical Yorgos Lanthimos take on that?’ Within the opening few scenes, when the passenger on the coach opposite Emma Stone’s Abigail begins pleasuring himself and she falls out into a faeces covered path in front of the Queen’s estate, I was realising ‘oh, _that’s_ how we get it’. This is not a stuffy period drama, it is an unsentimental portrayal to say the least, as if Kathy Acker had reimagined Jane Austen. I can imagine a few Daily Mail types going into this movie expecting that nice Olivia Colman does The Kings Speech, or maybe Blackadder, and, erm, leaving early, while they pen letters of furious indignation.
The plot revolves around a trio of women, all played superbly. Colman is a delight as the dotty Queen Anne, manipulated by Weisz’s arch & politically savvy Lady Sarah Marlborough. We soon learn that this is really quite an intimate relationship. Into this set up enters Emma Stone’s Abigail, a servant, but also relation of Sarah’s who has fallen on hard times having been lost by her father in a game of whist, and forced to marry a “A balloon shaped German man with a thin cock”. Her herbal medicine skills get her taken on as Sarah’s maid and from here to the attention of the Queen.
Lanthimos has a lot of fun, being playful with the absurdities of the aristocracy, while also building up the tension and feuding between Abigail and Sarah. Abigail becomes the new favourite, artfully working her way into the Queen’s affection and the personal conflict between the Sarah and Abigail adds intrigue to the machinations of the leader of the opposition. The women are really in charge throughout the movie, as Abigail puts it ‘“I’m on my side – always”. No-one is a faint, or even, fair hearted maiden in this and the men are mainly absurd and pompous.
It has the comic realism of the Madness of King George, which renders the nobility as more concerned with bodily functions than national interests. It also contains some fantastic swearing (“he’s completely cuntstruck by you”, “They shit in the streets round here, political commentary they call it”).
Above all the crackling dialogue, pitch perfect acting and fine settings, there is a deeper truth in The Favourite also, as one might expect from Lanthimos. At a time when England is destroying itself, fuelled by romanticised versions of its own past, this movie smacks you round the face and declares that the past was no noble utopia, but a fetid, corrupt, sordid mess. In other words, a very human time, just like now.
