The Favourite

[zico]

9/10. Brilliant serious drama (at heart), but thoroughly enjoyable as it's laced with oodles of excellent offbeat comedy moments and scenes with a dash of surrealism, starring Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.
Warning : Infrequent very strong language (code for the "c-word").

Film is set in the early 1700's during the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) a weak-willed, bad-tempered and not over-bright queen suffering from gout and poor health, with Rachel Weisz (Sarah) as the Queen's long-standing best friend of the type who briskly tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, and wields huge power and influence over running the country through her position as the Queen's Favourite. Then Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives, a pretty young aristocrat fallen into poverty who has fallen on proverbial hard times, and been forced to beg for work as a servant, who sees a chance to regain her standing in the world - and the battle for the title of Queen's Favourite is joined, with the 2 rivals using all the various powers at their disposal. The story develops in all sorts of interesting and offbeat ways, but always stays internally consistent.

The 3 lead characters are brilliantly written, with great dialogue, and all 3 actresses take their opportunity to shine in the roles, providing lots of depth to the characters, so your sympathy and allegiances to the characters may change as the story develops. There's lots of humour, including clever and cutting verbal insults delivered with icy British politeness, witty visual gags and also some effective slapstick which seems to fit well with the period, as does the occasional swearing. The shooting scenes are a particularly clever device to get across the feelings of the characters. The direction is a bit flashy, but it's done to an end, in giving a sense of how the Queen's court is an artifical enclosed world, with just a few important people involved, and the film shows in various ways how falling out of favour at the court can mean falling very far indeed.

So far, it's the best film I've seen in 2019 (not that difficult!) but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I still think that way at end-December 2019.

[UncleIan]

I think I'd seen the advert one too many times, and was expecting a 90 minute bawdy costume romp, so it left me a little flat if I'm honest. Then again, it was pretty good, on reflection, I did enjoy it, it just wasn't quite all that I'd expected. The three main characters were certainly entertaining. I know what you mean about the direction being a bit flashy, I kept staring at the screen wondering why they had a fish eye lens on. Again. I was reading somewhere they used natural light for it all, and so I guess they were using a real location, so maybe the wide angles were needed because you couldn't have the camera out of the set. Still, it didn't detract too much.

Definitely worth going out on yet another night with stuff all on the telly.

7/10 (but I'm a harsh marker)

[todthedog]

Agree with both really enjoyed the film.
Not what I was expecting but non the worse for that.
8 /10

Best film for a few months but that's not saying much.

Have you seen 'Leave no trace' ? My best film of 2018.

[MaraMan]

In the last couple of weeks I have seen The Favourite, Stan & Ollie, and Mary Queen of Scots, all with high expectations. I am sad to say I was disappointed with all of them. I don't think I am particularly hard to please but each one had, in my view, many flaws. For me I would score them as follows:
The Favourite 6.5/10
Stan & Ollie 7/10
Mary Queen of Scots 7/10

Hopefully there will be better to come.

MM

[nimnarb]

Agree with both really enjoyed the film.
Not what I was expecting but non the worse for that.
8 /10

Best film for a few months but that's not saying much.

Have you seen 'Leave no trace' ? My best film of 2018.

Excellent film. Extremely well done. Question. That part where you see the father giving pills to presumably an ex Vet in exchange for money, where did he get those pills from? Also to live, I presume he was getting a Vet pension? The ending was stunning. Any more films like that? 2018 for me, was not the best for anything half decent at all. Have you seen the Florida Project?

[todthedog]

My guess was some form of anti depressant not taken.
nimnbarb
On a totally different theme 'A quiet place' was another stand out for me.

Sorry for the hijack Zico