“The Favorite”: a historical comedy about the love of three women - with Emma Stone and dancing

"The Favorite" - a picture of the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos about life at the court of the British Queen Anne at the beginning of the XVIII century. Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone performed the lead roles. I believe that, despite the historical surroundings, the film turned out to be lively, modern, and - most importantly - not at all boring.

The so-called “festival cinema” (in fact, festivals show anything) can be treated with warmth or disbelief, but at least one stamp is indestructible: it is supposedly boring to watch it. Boredom is an individual and subjective category, a general rule cannot be derived. Nevertheless, the rule “author's means unbearable” mysteriously remains an axiom. Therefore, you feel a particularly strong gratitude towards the great artists who manage to shake this confidence. Yorgos Lanthimos, the most influential director of the “new Greek wave”, the author of radical “Kynodontas”, “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”, turned out. In the new film “The Favorite”, he retained the recognizable author's style and refused to make any compromises, at the same time creating a spectacular, funny and emotional spectacle for a wide audience.

The plot of “The Favorite”, connected with political intrigues at the court of the British Queen Anne at the beginning of the 18th century, may not evoke an instant intuitive understanding of the modern viewer (by the end of the viewing he will still love and hate the main characters). However, on it will respond people who remember the Soviet era. They are well acquainted with the queen herself, a capricious and sick woman, and her power-hungry favorite Duchess Marlboro, actually leading a war with France for the Spanish inheritance on behalf of the state, and Duchess rival, ambitious Abigail, who traveled an incredible way from a servant in a palace to a confidant of a woman. All of them are vaudeville Eugène Scribe "The Glass of Water" heroes.

The Favorite writers Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara may not have read Scribe at all, but they have clearly studied history. The most striking thing here is that almost any, even an episodic event of the film, is accurate and confirmed by the facts. Artistic fiction is limited to specific dialogues — especially the backstage ones, in which characters are not shy in expressions — and the erotic underplay of political intrigues that is not reflected in sources with such frankness and remains in the area of assumptions. "The Favorite" - a picture of a love triangle with the participation of three women: the single lonely queen, the strong-willed beautiful duchess and the twinkling, an intelligent, unprincipled career woman from the lower classes.

Lanthimos has so far worked only with his own material, which he invariably wrote in collaboration with Efthymis Filippou, and here he was alone with an alien script based on the history of another country. Moreover, the camera operator in this picture is not the usual Thimios Bakatakis, but the Briton Robbie Ryan. Another important and new to Lanthimos participant in the creative process is an outstanding costume designer, multiple Oscar winner Sandy Powell (Orlando, Shakespeare in Love). The costumes are crazy beautiful and deserve a separate exhibition somewhere in Buckingham Palace or Windsor; The camera that captures the nightlife of the courtyard by candlelight, without other sources of light, recalls the achievements of Stanley Kubrick in Barry Lyndon. In general, it turns out that the Greek director is an alien here, hired by producers as a professional and obliged to forget about his own ambitions for the sake of the project’s success. However, this is a fallacy. In fact, Lanthimos dreamed of “The Favorite” for many years, and this clever, impetuous, wicked, virtuoso ribbon is the realization of his long-time intention.

The director's style is recognized instantly, from the first shots - even from the geometric arrangement of the letters in the initial credits: this is how the fancy subtitles for the heads of this baroque film novel will be made out. Through the artificial court atmosphere, consisting of sometimes ridiculous ceremonies, Lanthimos’s inclination to the theater of the absurd is the best possible way; at first it reminds of early Peter Greenaway (especially “The Draftsman’s Contract”), but soon the similarity turns out to be an illusion.

Living people who are no different from us inhabit the painted world, in which genuine feelings and thoughts are hidden under a thick layer of blush. They also get sick and die, fall in love and are jealous, envy and pity each other, show greed (often) and sacrifice themselves (rarely). They also eat and vomit, fuck and masturbate, lisp their pets and eat junk food, then lick their fingers. Moreover, they dance, how can they dance! Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace would voluntarily give their prize for the best rock and roll dance to the duchess of Marlborough and Baron Masham.

Olivia Colman in the role of Queen Anne fearlessly moves from a caricature (“With this make-up, you look like a badger”, ”her mistress coolly states) to a soulful drama. She already starred in Lanthimos in a small role in The Lobster, and Rachel Weisz (Duchess of Marlborough) played a central role there, as here: her static-ironic acting style perfectly complies with the laws of conditional cinema, invented by the Greek master.

However, the main star of “The Favorite”, of course, is Emma Stone, who played Abigail. Behind her, she has worked with Woody Allen, the Venetian prize and the Oscar for La La Land, a number of other prominent roles, including in Birdman, but she has never been so charming and two-faced, natural and seductive, sincere and just alive like here. Stone is here and the spectator's agent, his guide through the labyrinths of the royal palace; and the object of alien cruelty and intrigue; and the brave adventurer going all in, the heiress of Becky Sharp - or her predecessor, if you follow the historical chronology. On the other hand, who cares about dates? Despite the crinolines, ruffled collars and endlessly sounding behind the scenes of Bach, Handel, Purcell and Vivaldi, “The Favorite” is modern.