The Favourite

Director Yorgos Lanthimos 

Left to right, Actress Olivia Colman and Emma Stone 

THE FAVOURITE                B                     
Ireland  Great Britain  USA  (119 mi)  2018  d:  Yorgos Lanthimos             Official site 

As it turns out, I am capable of much unpleasantness. 

―Abigail (Emma Stone)

This is what you call a good old-fashioned costume drama, the kind kids love to play when they’re young, able to ham it up in colorfully dressed-up attire, freely exaggerating characters to extremes, as after all, they’re seeking attention in their young underdeveloped lives.  Add mature subject matter to a room full of adults and you’ve got yourself a lavish theatrical spectacle, with sexual intrigue galore and a government that loves to play dress-up with wigs and powdered faces, all pretending to be something they’re not, like being noble, where the game is getting underneath the surface to discover the real lives underneath all the comic buffoonery.  Rivaling the deceptive wit of a Monty Python sketch, written by Deborah Davis with help from Tony McNamara, this deliciously entertaining 18th century historic sex farce reeks of flowery language and sarcastic double entendres usually meant to disarm or humiliate the person spoken to, where language is a means for personal assault, with characters trading surgically precise barbs and insults with great regularity, while the reigning powerbrokers protect their vested interests with aplomb, literally dismissing anyone or anything that disagrees with them.  While Queen Ann (the meekish Olivia Colman) who ruled England from 1702 until 1714 sits on the throne, her physical and mental capacities are diminished by gout (so extreme she had to be carried to her Coronation), burdened with a cane and wheelchair, having lost 17 children in her lifetime (replacing them with pet rabbits in her bedroom chamber), five were stillborn, eight were miscarriages, while the others survived for brief durations, expressing little interest in running a government, viewed as ridiculously frail and not of sound mind, spending nearly all of her time locked away in her room, stuffing herself on cakes and what nots, an infantile caricature of what power represents (remind you of anyone?), with regularly occurring temper tantrums, having more in common with the randomly capricious moods of Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts, utterly mad, disagreeable and quarreling all the while, screaming out orders as the mood suits her like “Off with her head!” as all she can really think about is herself.  While it’s a disparagingly weak portrait of a nation in crisis, suffering the delusional rantings of a simpleton on the throne who is in constant need of companionship, all that is righted by the corrective substitute of Lady Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz, supremely dominant with a carefree spirit, exuding utter abandon and joy), the Queen’s advisor on all things from fashion to waging war, who effectively runs the government in abstentia, gallivanting around the court like one of The Three Musketeers, shooting pigeons with rifles, riding horseback through the forests, and manipulating the will of the Queen with utter nonchalance, treating her like a child, scolding and rebuking her at will (as she does the other men on the court), acting as her sole protector, the only person in her trust, as she’s also her secret lover.  While the men amuse themselves with the delusions of power (the film ignores whoever the Queen is consorting with to get pregnant), playing war games with France and arguing over taxes, their role is completely diminished by the effusive power of the women, content instead to serve in a subservient role.   

The film had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Grand Prize (2nd place) to Cuarón’s ROMA (2018), while Colman came away with the Best Actress award.  Shot on location at the Hatfield House in Hertfordshire and the Knole House in Sevenoaks, Kent (The Many Lives of an English Manor House - Archaeology Magazine), the darkened chambers are massive, with humans dwarfed by the immensity of the empty spaces, illuminated by candlelight, shot in a stretched and warped super wide-angled lens by Robbie Ryan, distorting reality as much as possible, with messengers continually moving in and out of the corridors, like a Shakespeare play.  Using amusing chapter headings that describe a distinct moment in the next sequence, upbeat classical music adds a degree of romp and hilarity to the proceedings, as the mood in the Queen’s chamber is constantly dour, yet the happy strains of Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, or Purcell add a certain luster to the overall mood and charm of life in a castle.  The only film in his repertoire that doesn’t include the suffocatingly restrictive writing style of the director, this has a much more open and freewheeling style, where gossip and back-stabbing are the main activities inside the castle, while an updated dance sequence is stunningly unconventional, featuring flamboyant Madonna-like vogue hand movements and the remarkable dexterity of early break dancing, yet set in such a traditional costume ball setting that is drop dead hilarious.  While it’s clear Lady Sarah wears the pants of this government, toying with men as mere sport, all in good fun, with her acid tongue and acerbic wit having a good time at their expense, running things smoothly without interference, she literally commands men at will (as well as the Queen) to carry out her wishes.  She is, as the title suggests, the court’s favorite, where a running joke will have Lady Sarah unable to attend to the Queen, being told she’s too busy running matters of the state, with the Queen interrupting the messenger, exclaiming “That’s me!  I’m the state.”  While the film has a kind of goofy feel about it, the mood quickly changes with the introduction of a third female character, Abigail (Emma Stone, who relies upon charm and trickery), Lady Sarah’s distant cousin, whose royal lineage took a tumble when her father gambled her away in a card game, fallen out of favor, leaving her impoverished in a life of “whoredom,” doomed to pleasing men she didn’t know, now searching for a way out of this misery, doing menial work as a scullery maid in the palace, she assumes the role of Cinderella, detested by her sadistic rival servants, treated as the lowest of the low, wishing for that magical turn of events at the masked ball.  Hoping to ingratiate herself into the good graces of the Queen, she searches the forest for herbal remedies that might soothe her inflamed legs, violating protocol by applying the remedy herself, without permission, for which she is brutally punished, yet the Queen finds the treatment effective, as it eases her suffering, so Lady Sarah makes Abigail her lady-in-waiting, soon discovering the benefits of such a position, as the men in government wish to pry secrets about Lady Sarah’s various positions on matters of the court, going to great lengths (in other words demeaning humiliation) to get her to comply.  Abigail is surprisingly literate, able to match wits with anyone, and sexually precocious, not to mention ambitious, willing to do anything to get her title and royal standing back.  In other words, she’s a mirror reflection of Lady Sarah, as both have their own designs on favor. 

While secretly burroughing herself into the hidden realms of the palace, Abigail is able to spy on the sexual dalliances of Lady Sarah and the Queen, which is little more than kissing on the lips, with suggestions of so much more, as we learn that the Queen’s appetite knows no bounds.  With this in mind, Abigail starts the sexual machinations, rubbing the Queen’s legs on command, which begins the exploration of more fertile territory, with the camera honed in only on the Queen’s facial expressions, as she obviously agrees with this discretionary exploration of the forbidden fruit.  Once Lady Sarah gets wind of this, her inclination is to have Abigail sent away, punishing her openly defiant transgressions, but the Queen will have none of it, as she likes this latest turn of events, spending her nights sleeping with the young maiden, hoodwinked into believing a selfless Abigail wants nothing from her.  Knowing she’s a liar and a cheat, Lady Sarah is about to mount a frontal attack exposing the young upstart, but Abigail spikes her tea, causing her to pass out while riding a horse through the woods, disappearing for days on end.  In this interim, Abigail not only worms her way into the Queen’s heart, but cleverly manipulates her into granting a wedding with a young nobleman, which reinstates her royal standing.  The honeymoon is a thing of beauty, about as short-lived as a short fuse, all the while mulling over the supposed revenge tactics of the missing Lady Sarah, who ends up in a flophouse, her face mangled and badly bruised, with a wide gash causing permanent scarring on her cheek, slowly recovering until the Queen finally dispatches a search party to find her. When Abigail suggests they are even and can now drop any foul intentions, a quick slap to the face suggests Lady Sarah doesn’t share her views on an existing detente.  Upon her return, however, dressed all in black with a veil over the right side of her face (“If I were a man, I’d be quite dashing with a scar like this”), she resembles the look of a pirate, but not only that, Lady Sarah has lost her leverage with the Queen.  Taunting Sarah with her newly reinstated royal status, Abigail leads a charmed life, as her fairy tale dreams apparently did come true.  Unable to convince the Queen of Abigail’s foul motives, Lady Sarah threatens to expose the Queen with the utter embarrassment of her prurient love letters sent to Lady Sarah, which would raise a royal scandal and threaten her rule, but this only leaves a bad taste with the Queen, not only refusing to send Abigail away, but banishes Lady Sarah instead, whose utter fall from grace (by nefarious means) is a knockout blow.  What truly elevates this film is the relation it bears to Kubrick’s masterwork BARRY LYNDON (1975), but from a female perspective, where there is no infamous duel scene, but if you stay over the end credits you can hear the fluttering of the doves.  Kubrick’s film astounds with an infamous Schubert Piano Trio, Schubert / Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major, D. 929: 2nd mvt - YouTube (3:07) playing a major musical theme, while this film utilizes another sublimely elegant work by Schubert, his Piano Sonata #21, D. 960, played by Artur Schnabel, Artur Schnabel plays Schubert Sonata in B flat Major D 960 (2/3) YouTube (11:22), which plays over Lady Sarah’s masterfully conniving fall from favor.  While all three women are adorable and irresistible, the film is comically subversive, way over the top, with plenty of glitz and glamor, yet it doesn’t hold a candle to the epic tragedy that befell Barry Lyndon in Kubrick’s film.  

2016 Top Ten List #9 The Lobster

THE LOBSTER                     A-                
Greece  Netherlands  Ireland  Great Britain  France  (118 mi)  2015  d:  Yorgos Lanthimos

From Greece, the same country that gave us Costa-Gavras’s brilliant political exposé Z (1969), showing the demise of a military junta during absurdly repressive times, the country again is in deep economic turmoil over its national debt, where the abruptly changing insecurity of life in that society simply does not resemble anywhere else in the rest of the world, causing this Greek filmmaker at least to take a completely unique worldview.  Evoking the depths of Greek tragedy with a true artistic realization, Yorgos Lanthimos invents an absurdly bleak universe that is such an extreme form of dark comedy that it appears to exist in its own universe, where it’s often hard to equate how it mirrors our own world.  Unsettling, to say the least, demonstrating a kind of scathing sarcasm that hasn’t really been seen since Terry Gilliam’s nightmarish BRAZIL (1985), the film has a power to enthrall but also confuse, as it lends itself to no easy answers.  Like the best David Lynch films, the director would be hard pressed to find any critic that actually understands specifically what the director was trying to achieve, though from an audience standpoint, it’s not like anything else you’ll see all year.  Weirdly reminiscent of LORD OF THE FLIES (1990) for adults, the starkness of the situation calls upon a completely new societal order, where nothing is as it seems, but exists in the bizarre logic of the moment, told exclusively through deadpan humor, surrealistic flourish, and completely absurd events.  At the center is a subversive rebellion against conformity, where characters are forced to accept the most peculiar set of rules as the norm, and then carry out their daily routines within the appalling restrictions of those imposed standards, each weirder than the next, where the outer shell capitulates willingly, showing no sign of aversion, while the inner being is profoundly disturbed, but can’t show it, as the entire film evolves around the core idea of pretending to fit in.  David, Colin Farrell in his most unglamorous role, plays a pot-bellied, middle aged, ordinary man with no outstanding attributes, whose wife of eleven years has just dumped him, where in this society it’s a crime to be single, so he’s sent to a “home” for recovery, a rehabilitation hotel with strict rules and the most ominous consequences.  Here he has 45 days to find an acceptable mate or he will be transformed into an animal of his choice, while accompanying him on his journey is Bob, his brother turned into a dog, transformed years ago from a previous visit to this same recovery home.   

Described as an “unconventional love story,” the film is set in the near future where being single is considered a crime, so people’s lives depend on finding a partner.  While the hotel establishment resembles a health spa, it’s more appropriately a cruel and sadistic prison with draconian regulations that are strictly enforced, where the rules are accepted without question, as if this has been a longstanding tradition, including morning visits from a maid, Ariane Labed (the director’s wife), who nakedly straddles David’s lap until he gets an erection before abruptly departing, leaving him in a state of permanent dissatisfaction, where there isn’t the slightest hint of love or happiness anywhere to be found, instead residents cower in fear at the inevitable, willing to accept the slightest hint of compatibility as a sign of true love.  Couples are drawn together by an exaggerated notion of having something in common, using physical attributes as “defining characteristics,” where both are left-handed, walk with a limp, have a speech impediment, or are subject to nose bleeds, etc, a seemingly random or arbitrary trait, where people are so desperate to be accepted that they attribute maximum importance to seemingly insignificant details.  For David, it’s his nearsightedness, for his friend Robert (John C. Reilly), it’s his lisp, while John (Ben Whishaw) walks with a limp, as they seek to find a partner who matches their own personal characteristic.  Part of the intrigue of the film is the novel use of originality, where they have literally created a futuristic Brave New World that exists in its own peculiar mathematical certainty, but makes little sense.  Being stuck in the absolutism of this Kafkaesque totalitarian world is the fate of each character, where no background information explains how society arrived at this point, yet the lifeless and banal quality of their lives is matched by a musical soundtrack that is wrenchingly emotional, including Beethoven String Quartet No 1 in F major, Op 18, No 1 Adagio ... YouTube (8:34), which recurs throughout like a musical motif, becoming a parody of what’s missing.  Also featured is the equally rare and obscure, yet extremely stylized romanticism provided by Sophia Loren and Tonis Maroudas singing “What Is This Thing They Call Love,” Sophia Loren, Tonis Maroudas - Ti 'ne afto pou to lene agapi (1957 ... YouTube (2:26) from BOY ON A DOLPHIN (1957).  The film is narrated by the voice of Rachel Weisz, an unseen character that doesn’t appear until well into the second half of the film, who speaks in a halting voice, with no voice inflection, never sure of herself, as no one, not even the narrator, is capable of actually expressing themselves clearly, instead everything is communicated in strict robotic deadpan without ever showing an ounce of emotion.  While this conveys an amateurish feel, as if actors never really rehearsed their lines, it’s part of Lanthimos establishing a totally “new” world that is both haunting and ridiculous, provoking outright laughter at times, adding bizarre twists that are weird and increasingly uncomfortable, tapping into an extreme degree of pain and anguish.

With the arrival of new guests, the coolly efficient hotel manager (Olivia Colman) speaks with uncanny ease, “The fact that you will be transformed into an animal should not alarm you,” as she and her partner (Garry Mountaine) provide pop songs and inane skits for the identically dressed hotel guests advocating the advantages of couples, Something`s Gotten Hold Of My Heart - The Lobster - YouTube (4:08), while the throbbing electrical sounds resembling a fire alarm signals it’s time for The Hunt, extraordinary scenes when the residents are bussed into a nearby forest to hunt down escapees and other individuals called Loners with tranquilizer darts, gaining an extra day for every captive delivered, dramatically elevated to a slow motion operatic montage shot by cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, Apo Mesa Pethamenos - Danai (The Lobster OST - HD Video ... YouTube (3:06).  One of the guests, a ruthless misanthrope who is easily the hotel’s most unpleasant resident known as the Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia), takes sadistic relish in bagging record numbers of hunt victims, each targeted for animal transformation and returned back to the forest.  The sinister nature underlying each and every scene only grows more chilling, where there’s a lot going on under the surface, most of it indescribably dark and cruel, like being stuck in a Grimm fairy tale.  When David finally escapes to the forest, he discovers yet another rebellious society of wandering outcasts run by the tyrannical rule of Loner Leader Léa Seydoux (couldn’t help but wonder how she became the leader), a terrifying force of evil who inflicts her own ridiculous set of rules, where touching, kissing, and falling in love is forbidden, punishable by mutilation, so they survive like hidden guerilla fighters.  It’s here that David meets his soul mate, the Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), but they are unable to express affection, so they develop a coded sign language designed to hide their true feelings from others.  “When we turn our heads to the left, it means I love you more than anything in the world, and when we turn our heads to the right, it means Watch out, we’re in danger.  We had to be very careful in the beginning not to mix up I love you more than anything in the world with Watch out, we’re in danger.”  Inexplicably, the Loner Leader and a randomly chosen partner lead David and his chosen partner on covert visits to the City, ostensibly to visit her parents (both play classical guitar), where she invents a life and a career, as the City is run by an equally arcane set of rules, with police on the lookout for non-married individuals who are subject to arrest.  Shrewdly written by Lanthimos and his frequent co-writer Efthymis Filippou, exhibiting a more accomplished sense of overall direction, where one can’t help but be a bit wonderstruck by all the perplexing, unanswered questions, the film draws heavily upon existentialism and the theater of the absurd, where the specter of liberation or conformity shadows every scene, creating a thought provoking and oddly moving experience where romance remains undefined and continually under construction, even by the end, which couldn’t be more disturbingly ambiguous.