Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film, The Favourite, like much of his previous work, is a curious beast indeed.
At first glance it plays as a period piece, a baroque and farcical comedy of manners set in the court of Queen Anne in the early 18th century. This is an impression reinforced by its setting in a sumptuous palace (the real-life Hatfield House in Hertfordshire) full of hidden doors, labyrinthine unlit staircases, shadowy galleries and long, serpentine passageways, which lends itself to eavesdropping, conspiratorial gossip and the sudden discovery of people in rooms in which their presence is undetected or inappropriate. However, the ornate setting is a mere surface veneer that does little to mask the cynical and profane mendacity, and political and personal malevolence that characterises the royal court.
The film’s main plot point is supposedly the rivalry between Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), Anne’s advisor, confidant and (as the film contends) lover, and her impecunious young cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) who aspires to the usurping of Sarah’s role both in the Queen’s favour and her bed, an ambition that she eventually realises. Whilst this competition between Sarah and Abigail gives the film its chief impetus and energy, the domineering presence is that of Queen Anne herself (Olivia Colman), a physically frail and mercurial character, apt to sudden and inexplicable tantrums, typically when confronted by the spectacle of others enjoying themselves in music or dance. The Queen’s court is a perpetually tense, paranoid environment where her servants, courtiers and assorted hangers-on are forced to tiptoe on eggshells for fear of earning her capricious wrath. The script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara portrays Queen Anne’s court as a cynical, profane, political bearpit, where all friendships and relationships are no more than strategic alliances intended to earn advantage for the principals. Indeed, the chief motivation for Abigail’s manoeuvring is depicted as being driven less by genuine feeling for the Queen (unsurprising since Anne seems singularly incapable of exuding any genuine warmth or affection) and more by the opportunity that the Queen’s favour would afford to advance her own social standing. The court itself is seen as a dissolute and acrimonious place; the film’s events take place against an unseen but ever present background of war in Europe, and the social and political foment in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. These events intrude only occasionally into the story, most notably with Queen Anne’s attempts, urged on by Sarah, to gain parliamentary approval for her proposal to raise property taxes on her wealthiest subjects to finance her military adventurism. Despite the epic events being played out off-screen, Queen Anne’s court is portrayed as dissolute and venal, where courtiers and members of the Queen’s household are more concerned with their own agendas and appetites than with the compelling questions of national destiny being played out elsewhere.
The film’s defining performance is doubtless that of Colman as Queen Anne; she masterfully injects empathy and even genuine pathos into a role that could easily have lapsed into Blackadder-esque caricature. The script gives us just enough insight into her tragic personal backstory for us to have an appreciation of the deep well of loss and grief that has formed her jaundiced and irascible personality. Lanthimos and his scriptwriters are, for the most part, unconcerned with accurate historical reconstruction; they have taken significant liberties with the many gaps in the historical record, and have not been averse to filling them with what cannot be other than pure invention. One product of this would also seem to be at least one noteworthy omission; Prince George of Denmark, Anne’s husband and consort, with whom she is known to have had a close and loving relationship, is a character entirely absent from the film.
But this is a minor quibble with a film whose obvious intent is not to be a painstaking period reconstruction, but an engaging, energetic and irreverent farce which dares to make complex female relationships, however fictionalised, its main subject, and the fulcrum on which the entire film rotates.