The Favourite (Film Review)
Feb. 27th, 2019 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhen I first started to hear about this film, I thought the story sounded very vaguely familiar, but it took months before I realised it's based on the same era, and partly on the same personel, as Eugene Scribe's play A Glass of Water, which I had seen in a 1960 filmed version, starring Liselotte Pulver as Queen Anne (decades younger and without 17 dead children), Sabine Sinjen as Abigail, Hilde Krahl as Sarah Churchill and Gustaf Gründgens as Henry St. John, who is based on a different Tory politician but roughly has a similar role to Harley in The Favourite. The reason why it took me months to realise the connection was that Scribe's play (which was first staged in 1842) is utterly without same sex relationships - Anne, Sarah and Abigail are after the same guy, Masham -, then there's Anne as a young ingenue queen, and lastly, the dominating figure and hero of the play is the worldly, aphorism-dropping Henry St. John, who champions peace with France, while Sarah (and her off stage husband, the Duke of Marlborough) are the definite villains, characterized as a couple of greedy war mongers prolonging the war with France for their own financial benefit. (BTW, this in a French play filmed in Germany in 1960 is not surprising.) Abigail, Queen Anne and Masham the universally desired boy toy are all young, naive and none too bright.
The Favourite, almost needless to say, tells a very different story.
Having watched it now, I can see where all the comparisons to All About Eve come from. It has that merciless wit, roughly the same emotional beats and is absolutely female centric, with the men given ostantatious wardrobe, few-lines-of-dialogue background parts (though Nicolas Hoult evidently has great fun in his white periwig and garish make up as bitchy Tory leader Harley, while Mark Gatiss does a rare unflamboyant and low key cameo as Marborough, Sarah's husband). Given the (deserved) awards Olivia Colman has been collecting throughout the past year, I wonder who had to make the decision as to which of the three leading ladies would get nominated as supporting and who as the main role, because honestly, I couldn't have said. You could easily make a case for any of the three as lead. Abigail's rise from no one to the new undisputed Favourite provides the external structure, but you could equally say that Sarah's fall from Favourite to banished exile does, plus ultimately, the film which is partly based on Sarah's memoirs shares her pov on everyone (Anne's needy and weak and prone to be manipulated, though not always so, Abigail is a schemer who just pretends her gentless, Sarah might be blunt to the point of cruelty but also is sincere in her love of both Queen and Country). Otoh, if you asked me whose tragedy this witty Edward-Albee-esque triangle is, I'd name neither Sarah (who lost the Queen's favour and her powerful position at court, but still has considerable wordly goods and the powerful husband with whom she shares at least an affectionate partnership, in contrast to Abigail, whose husband is to her just a means to get a title but in whom she has no further interest), nor Abigail (who has achieved all she wanted, and while the realisation of the emotional emptiness at the end visibly disturbs her, she definitely would not change places if you asked her), but Anne, who might be the sole character honest about her emotions throughout and yet at the end is stuck with the horrifying realisation she's lost the love of her life in favour of a relationship which isn't at all what she thought it would be. And Anne gets to be vulnerable (emotionally and physically) in a way the other two women aren't; Olivia Colman plays it beautifully.
The contrast to the triangle Scribe offered is really stark, and not just because of the "three women wanting the same men" versus "two women competing for the third who is the key of providing them with power" factor. There's manipulation and backstabbing going on in both versions, but the three women in The Favourite all have their own agenda, and if they ally with male courtiers (Abigail with Harley, Sarah with the leade rof the Whigs, Godolphin, and of course her husband), they are the ones calling the shots. It's never just about sex/romance or just about politics; they're utterly mixed up, for Abigail even before she arrives at court, since her low position is due to her father having gambled her away at age 15. And while the film definitely implies Sarah cares sincerely for Anne, it doesn't postulate that Sarah's able to see Anne the person as separate from Anne the Queen (and her key to power).
Mind you, the question as to whether the Whig-favoured continued war with France or the Tory-favoured peace negotiations are the right course of action independent from who champions it is one the movie does not tackle. The sole (brief) scenes not taking lace at court take place at a brothel. Harley - who is literally painted in selfishness - argues that the people have been suffering through the long war, but Sarah shoots his arguments down by saying he means the landowners suffer, whom he represents, and we don't catch a glimpse of the non-court population (the brothel aside) at all. It's not that kind of movie. The repeated use of an optical trick that makes everything look like the inside of a fish bowl heighten the sense of claustrophobia.
In conclusion, it's a vicious, highly entertaining comedy of manners with three great leading ladies, and does live up to the hype. And given the Black Sails backstory with the Hamiltons starts during Anne's rule, I definitely want crossovers.
The Favourite, almost needless to say, tells a very different story.
Having watched it now, I can see where all the comparisons to All About Eve come from. It has that merciless wit, roughly the same emotional beats and is absolutely female centric, with the men given ostantatious wardrobe, few-lines-of-dialogue background parts (though Nicolas Hoult evidently has great fun in his white periwig and garish make up as bitchy Tory leader Harley, while Mark Gatiss does a rare unflamboyant and low key cameo as Marborough, Sarah's husband). Given the (deserved) awards Olivia Colman has been collecting throughout the past year, I wonder who had to make the decision as to which of the three leading ladies would get nominated as supporting and who as the main role, because honestly, I couldn't have said. You could easily make a case for any of the three as lead. Abigail's rise from no one to the new undisputed Favourite provides the external structure, but you could equally say that Sarah's fall from Favourite to banished exile does, plus ultimately, the film which is partly based on Sarah's memoirs shares her pov on everyone (Anne's needy and weak and prone to be manipulated, though not always so, Abigail is a schemer who just pretends her gentless, Sarah might be blunt to the point of cruelty but also is sincere in her love of both Queen and Country). Otoh, if you asked me whose tragedy this witty Edward-Albee-esque triangle is, I'd name neither Sarah (who lost the Queen's favour and her powerful position at court, but still has considerable wordly goods and the powerful husband with whom she shares at least an affectionate partnership, in contrast to Abigail, whose husband is to her just a means to get a title but in whom she has no further interest), nor Abigail (who has achieved all she wanted, and while the realisation of the emotional emptiness at the end visibly disturbs her, she definitely would not change places if you asked her), but Anne, who might be the sole character honest about her emotions throughout and yet at the end is stuck with the horrifying realisation she's lost the love of her life in favour of a relationship which isn't at all what she thought it would be. And Anne gets to be vulnerable (emotionally and physically) in a way the other two women aren't; Olivia Colman plays it beautifully.
The contrast to the triangle Scribe offered is really stark, and not just because of the "three women wanting the same men" versus "two women competing for the third who is the key of providing them with power" factor. There's manipulation and backstabbing going on in both versions, but the three women in The Favourite all have their own agenda, and if they ally with male courtiers (Abigail with Harley, Sarah with the leade rof the Whigs, Godolphin, and of course her husband), they are the ones calling the shots. It's never just about sex/romance or just about politics; they're utterly mixed up, for Abigail even before she arrives at court, since her low position is due to her father having gambled her away at age 15. And while the film definitely implies Sarah cares sincerely for Anne, it doesn't postulate that Sarah's able to see Anne the person as separate from Anne the Queen (and her key to power).
Mind you, the question as to whether the Whig-favoured continued war with France or the Tory-favoured peace negotiations are the right course of action independent from who champions it is one the movie does not tackle. The sole (brief) scenes not taking lace at court take place at a brothel. Harley - who is literally painted in selfishness - argues that the people have been suffering through the long war, but Sarah shoots his arguments down by saying he means the landowners suffer, whom he represents, and we don't catch a glimpse of the non-court population (the brothel aside) at all. It's not that kind of movie. The repeated use of an optical trick that makes everything look like the inside of a fish bowl heighten the sense of claustrophobia.
In conclusion, it's a vicious, highly entertaining comedy of manners with three great leading ladies, and does live up to the hype. And given the Black Sails backstory with the Hamiltons starts during Anne's rule, I definitely want crossovers.
