THE FAVOURITE, a film by Yorgos Lanthimos

also Queen Anne and the machinations of her female lover and a court newcomer

"Lesbian love triangle costume piece" was something I read, somewhere, recently. Trailer confirmed, sort of. Really looking forward to it.

it's about 120 minutes

I can hear your eyebrows waggling

It's never dull and recognizably Lanthimos. The Queen Anne era is obscure t m, which helped.

Absolutely vile era for men's periwigs and makeup. Nicholas Hoult remains a dish, though.

*to me

that's strange i glued them down before i left the house

xxp

You'll learn lessons watching this thing.

lesbian ones?

xp boys: Having read most of http://www.frockflicks.com/, I can only gather the ladies love full bottomed wigs and rouge on boys. While I've yet to see it theatrically, reviews indicate that every male herein is a buffoon (in accord with experience) and that the ladies are quick witted and foul mouthed, which is fairly in accord with my contemporary experience. Also from the aforementioned site the costumes by multiple Oscar winner Sandy Powell all appear to be accurate for their era.

I liked this a lot, my favorite Lanthimos other than The Lobster. It ended pretty abruptly, but that final shot was something else. That bunny at the end was funny, him prodding / teasing the audience a year after Sacred Deer.

I hope he keeps this streak up, I love that he's done three films in three years. Someone has to take up Woody Allen's mantle lol

So stoked to see this

Very comfortably the worst of Lanthimos' last five films, but it's in English, has a couple movie stars, a promo budget, and was shot in castles, so it gets the audience. I hate American culture.

MVP: Nicholas Hoult, who has several comic line readings worthy of the late great Peter Cook.

also Yorg, lose the fucking fish-eye lens.

I don't know that Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are bigger stars than Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman? It's 100% the setting (and of course being in the right language)

i think emma stone pulls a lot more weight in 2018 than those other names

Very comfortably the worst of Lanthimos' last five films, but it's in English, has a couple movie stars, a promo budget, and was shot in castles, so it gets the audience.

All true. So you liked it?

Some good calls here. I did like it, but The Death of Stalin was a better black comedy about court intrigue.

ok, movie stars doing *some* more suitably movie starrish things, rather than having their hands plunged into toasters.

I liked it better than Deer but not by much. And yeah agreed w Morbs re the fisheye

Fisheye was effective.

It's my least favorite Lanthimos and won't come close to a list of 2018's best but it works as sapphic Merchant Ivory.

Effective at what??? He used it seemingly randomly.

Lanthimos prefers animals to people (and why not?), and the fisheye stuff accepts this phantasmagoric world as seen from the sensibility of a rabbit or lobster.

There's a case to be made there. I mostly took it as "this ain't your momma's period piece!" signposting

i liked this movie a lot. haven't seen any of his others but i dug how cold and emotionally distant it was. watching people carry out intrigues, not identifying with them but being fascinated by them. and it looked great.

I was more annoyed by his gliding drone cam, this had some of that but like half of Sacred Deer used it

re: fisheye

Lanthimos talks about it here around the 12 minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9CT-dLPTkY

He says it reminded him of the convex mirrors in Dutch paintings from the 17th century.

Anyway, I liked the fisheye lens and I loved this movie.

says it reminded him of the convex mirrors in Dutch paintings from the 17th century.

Yep -- I mentioned Parmigianino in my own review.

A very important film about ladies falling over in very big dresses. After seeing it I watched the lobster and the other one but apart from the scene where the maid is voguing they are a waste of time. People who claim to be more interested in animals than people are so boring and should also make films about or for animals instead.

lmao "the other one"

I liked The Lobster three years ago and The Favourite three weeks ago so watched the other one last night and yeah, nah.

The Killing... works better as a satire for viewers who come from seriously dysfunctional families. I cackled through the ending.

Looking forward to seeing this (The Favourite) again early in the new year.

I thought this was funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbC0xszlyHo

People who claim to be more interested in animals than people are so boring and should also make films about or for animals instead.

― plax (ico), Saturday, December 29, 2018 7:32 p.m.

ftr we're animals

for restrained Lanthimos, see his last Greek film Alps

Dogtooth still reigns

is Alps streaming or available digitally? there was never a Region 1 home video release.

Amazon Prime

ayyyy

Sacred Deer one is still the only film of his that’s worked for me. The Favourite just felt too empty and vapid and I know that’s one of his things, but why?

Dogtooth still reigns

otm

Yep

i loved this. it's the only film of his i've loved although i liked both dogtooth and deer. i just loved eveything about it. it is gorgeous to look at.

Lanthimos prefers animals to people (and why not?)

disagree w this premise

thought this was great. a little bit slight, and i thought Rachel Weisz would come back one more time (also nearly everything was in the trailer smh). but i really liked it. the score was excellent

as with The Lobaster, I spent the first half absolutely mesmerised and the second half wondering exactly when it was going to end. He seems to introduce all the excitement and fun right near the beginning and then the wheels start spinning and it becomes samey. But yes, I really did enjoy this. The three leads were amazing, the set was incredible, the script perfect. Just could have done with a small trim

i like that every film I've seen by him (as far as I can remember) has a ridiculous dance sequence and a scene where someone deliberately smashes themself in the face

we've all been there

Yes I loved this, mainly for the acting by the three leads - but also for the dialogue, and the costumes (great work by Sandy Powell). I saw two Rachel Weisz films at the weekend (the other was Disobedience), and I’m really impressed by her versatility. I think this will be a cult film in years to come.

I'm not much of fan of anything the director has done since Dogtooth but thought this was very decent. Weisz puts in a right shift, and even that perennial useless fucker Hoult is pretty good. I've not enjoyed the design and costumes of a mainstream brit royal period movie this much since Kapur's Elizabeth.

how is he useless? He bats his eyelashes and purses his lips when he knows I'm watching.

comparison falls down bcz The Favourite is not so boring that you ossify to death halfway through

Well, tbf that's where comparisons to any Kubrick film fall apart.

weirdly significantly better than i expect oscar winning films to be

yeah wigs wigs wigs

xp Well, were it not for Olivia Colman's natural charisma, it would've gone 0-for-10 there.

weisz was best imo

phantom thread is better tho

flop otm

"are you here to seduce me or rape me?"

"were you sent here to ruin my evening, or possibly my entire life?"

shot, chaser

Just viewed. I was enchanted until the last 5 minutes, and really wish this could have stuck the landing.

The Draughtman's Contract (likely Lanthimo's major inspiration) is a better film (though the available video transfers from 16mm aren't), but this will remain in rotation.

Really? I thought the ending was perfect! They both realized they were trapped, but were in their own separate versions of reality. After all of the harshness of the preceding story I thought it was kind of moving

this was okay, mostly just reminded me that every 10 years or so everyone in the industry appears to develop an insatiable need for an artsy royals/costume drama to enthuse over

But especially if it lets loose with the c-word throughout.

Dangerous Liaisons, Marie Antoinette, etc. Something about combining the grotesquerie of prior eras' ruling classes and then rendering them "human"

er combining portraying

thought this was really excellent -- Rachel Weisz is becoming one of my "favourite" actors (her failed attempt at seducing the queen immediately after returning from her traumatic accident was darkly hilarious) and i always enjoy Colman and Stone, though i was most surprised by Hoult in this. he's vv funny and also extremely fucking tall, i mean he really downplayed that height in Fury Road w/that hunched over gait i guess but damn. i thought this looked great and just generally the ending was really something else, abrupt but appropriately so. Anne realizing the cruelty of Abigail in that moment and turning on her was quite the moment. i enjoyed the general uselessness of the male characters and the cinematography was really beautiful.

"Anne realizing the cruelty of Abigail in that moment and turning on her was quite the moment.”

yes! and Abigail realized that she was trapped right at the same time. it was a great ending.

Shakey, that's a bizarre argument ocnsidering that 'costume dramas' aren't a static genre. We wouldn't say the same about acclaimed sci-fi, film noir, etc. We can have more than one good genre film per quarter

more lesbian cutthroatery than costume genre

think YL will produce something less fashionably pandering next

The Favourite wasn't even close to a, ah, favorite of mine last year, but I remember it being #1 in the box office for several weeks and grossing well over $500 million, thanks to its fashionable pandering

proof positive!

it shtunk but as usual Shakey doesn't know why

you know that was a joke, right

I have absolutely no memory of last winter's box office

it grossed $96 M worldwide, close enough for I don't give a muddy pile of 18th-century ordure

doesn't stop you and Shakey from being wrong

this is a weird stand to take; it's as if Lanthimos betrayed you by essaying another film into which he poured his usual obsessions, successfully or not.

To think that Lanthimos pandered by making a film in a genre that its makers struggle to get financed

it wasn't a SPIDERMAN reboot and cost $15 million, of course they struggled

i watched this while i was flying to turks and caicos to, uh, get myself in the mood for vacation?

i remember it more fondly now a couple months later. my immediate reaction was that i wanted it to be funnier.

I’m not sure I understand exactly what his obsessions are, except maybe portraying extreme outsiderness and the feeling of being uncomfortable in one’s body, but I really did like this film, more than any other of his. I'm looking forward to Pop. 1280

Dude needs to lose the fisheye

I liked the fisheye in this and don’t remember him using it in any previous films

Lanthimos commented somewhere that the fisheye was motivated (in part) to distance his film from his influences (Draughtman's Contract, Barry Lyndon).

That's interesting. The fisheye worked really well. There are also scenes that are actually candle-lit, I suspect (re barry lyndon)

I think about the draughtsman's a lot with regard to this.

like the cinematography in this.

rachel weisz was a revelation (to me, who am not familiar with her filmography).

still haven't liked any of lanthimos' films as much as dogtooth

never saw the draughtsman's contract, it's on my list of films to watch this year

xp She's great and extremely fanciable, obv, but I didn't find her performance to be any better than any of the other main characters. Everyone is excellent in it. YL clearly has a profound engagement with actors/ performances.

I meant to say that I didn't find her a revelation because I always think she's extremely good.

I think about the draughtsman's a lot with regard to this.

― Funky Isolations (jed_), Friday, July 12, 2019 7:28 PM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is interesting. i haven't seen the draughtsman's contract in years but would be curious about how you see them relating. there is a certain formalism and they both have some episodic plotting. maybe it's just tough for me to relate greenaway to anything.

I relate Greenaway to Derek Jarman, not that their styles were that similar, I guess because they were both experimental British filmmakers from the 1980s-1990s

Not hard to find Lanthimos namechecking Draughtman's Contract in at least 4 interviews.

4 Oscar-Nominated Directors Reveal Their Biggest Inspirations

During preproduction we looked at different films — some of them period, some contemporary — in order to be inspired in different ways. We looked at period films that made bold choices in the past and were creative in how they dealt with the genre including Amadeus (Milos Forman), The Madness of King George (Nicholas Hytner), The Draughtsman's Contract (Peter Greenaway) and Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman) in terms of tone but also visually.

I loved the first episode of The Great - ploughing much the same furrow as The Favourite (right down to Nicholas Hoult's obnoxious performance), but it's one I apparently can't get enough of.