Yorgos Lanthimos’ effervescent new film The Favourite is set in the early eighteenth-century, in the court of the beleaguered Queen Anne. The drama concerns a coterie of variously self-interested and occasionally sympathetic characters, focusing on the central trio of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), Lady Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail Masham (Emma Stone). The screenplay is written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara – a writing partnership combining a comprehensive knowledge of the period, and of Sarah Churchill’s diaries, with sage script-writing experience. Davis and McNamara took Lanthimos’ inspiration to retain the essence of the drama and create narratively pleasing fictions around it. As a result, it is a startling and modernly ironic period piece. The language often veers into common parlance familiar to twenty-first-century ears, but the authority of the film loses nothing through this. Arguably, the choice of language allows the drama to be shot directly into the bloodstream.

The film draws the audience into its characters’ machinations, a feat in no small part down to Robbie Ryan’s cinematography. Ryan has said (interview here) that Lanthimos’ guide to use wide lenses, camera movement, and natural light were sensibilities that chimed with his own. The use of a fisheye lens works superbly as a peephole into the intimacies that would have ruined reputations. These very wide lenses also work to create an oppressive mood throughout.

The costumes from Sandy Powell really are exquisite, drawn in shades from white to black, with very little colour. Period costumes can sometimes seem too obvious a slam dunk for awards, but in this case I think any awards flowing to Powell are entirely justified. Weisz’s trouser suits for one were a gem.

The characters are drawn from life, and are fighting for place and position in a world unfavourable to women, especially those women who have fallen far. There is no villain of this piece. Instead, the screenplay and the performances ensure that we both condemn and empathise. We watch Abigail scheme, but it’s hard to entirely reproach her. Sarah, meanwhile, controls with a commanding and masculine demeanour, reinforcing her emotional control over the Queen with the threat of force. Queen Anne herself is by turns vulnerable and tyrannical. Colman, in this role, can turn on a dime in flashing through these moods.

Finally, I must mention the font! Graphic designer Vasilis Marmatakis selected Village and added some personalised touches to create a small delight. On the big screen you can see the brushed and frayed edges of this highly formal font – it is a piece of beauty for discerning font lovers as well as ignorant font appreciators like myself.

The Favourite is being lauded as a period drama with a twist, it’s new and innovative and an historical comedy of manners like you’ve never seen before… Which I simultaneously rail against and, to a certain extent, accept. There have been subversive and technically interesting period films before, such as Whit Stillman’s recent Love & Friendship, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, or the use of chapters, for example, in Merchant Ivory’s A Room With A View. And as a fan of films like these I’m continually appalled when a ‘period setting’ is used as short-hand for one mode of film-making and story-telling. Period films do not have to be ‘one’ thing. Time encompasses all emotion, all stories, all characters and should embrace all styles of film-making.

The Favourite is a mosaic of precise pieces of perfection which builds to a sumptuous stunner. I’m keen for future rewatches.

5/5