The Favourite (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

Despite my fondness for TV shows, I go to the cinema about once in an eternity, in fact, I think seeing this film was my first visit in 4 years. Cinemas tend to be too loud and flashy and huge for me, and I'm usually extremely irritated by the formulaic films I see advertised. I know this film had really great reviews, so I decided it was worth a trip, and I wasn't disappointed. I think it's definitely the best movie to come out in the past few years (I haven't actually been able to sit through a newly-released movie in about five years, due to either uncontrollable nausea or boredom). It's a very clever and visually arresting film, it's not something I would watch over dinner or at night for easy entertainment, because it's intellectually challenging and compelling. I loved almost everything about it; the camerawork, the editing, the writing, the acting (Olivia Colman completely deserves all the praise she's receiving), the relationships between the characters. I really loved the disjointed and discontinuous nature of the story, told in almost-disconnected, starkly formatted chunks. I loved the soundtrack, with the nearly-constant baroque music helping produce a dizzying, bizarre atmosphere. The film definitely pays tribute to 80s-90s sophisticated almost-art house period dramas, such as Peter Greenaway's work and Sally Porter's Orlando. The choice of subject (the much-neglected last Stuart Anne) is unusual and works very well in this extremely original film, since it deals with so many unexplored areas of the past. I've seen reviews that complain about the lack of historical accuracy, which I think is a completely ridiculous objection. The film is a sort of fantasy or improvosation on a historical theme, and historical accuracy is far from its objective. There's a dance scene with blatantly 80s or 90s dance moves, no one's actually suggesting that people danced like that in Queen Anne's court. It has a really bleak and odd humour, which made me both laugh and feel extremely uncomfortable, such as the scene in which Abigail's admirer sneaks into her room and she asks if he's come to rape her or seduce her, to which he responds 'I'm a gentleman' and she says 'oh, so it's rape.' One of the central themes of the film, which was extremely well-presented and explored, is the complex interaction between politics, desire and emotion. Sexual desire and power (political and social) are constantly being played off against one another, forming an inextricably tangled web. I have to say that all the positive reviews of this film are richly deserved, and I'm extremely impressed. Also, Emma Stone is officially the first American actress to actually manage an English accent.