Review: The Favourite - Director: Giorgos Lanthimos

2:10PM Screening at Hyland Cinema

Theatre Service: 8/10

Projection: 9/10

The Favourite 1 hr 59 mins

Due to the Roman numeral title cards, it was east to misjudge the pace of the film. While at first one would assume there are 3 or 5 acts, there ends up being 8. There’s a dip in the final act of the film where the view is unsure of what will happen next followed by the abrupt end of the film. Overall, because of the drama between characters, their development, and clever dialogue, the film feels evenly paced.

This film is where “Phantom Thread” meets “Crimson Peak” following the tragic tale of a discreetly lesbian Queen. “The Favourite” is a guilty reimagining of a Victorian fable. An original story and a recent winner of the BAFTA for Original Screenplay, we were not surprised to see this film win a few Oscars as well. The marketing for this film is especially coy to not give away too many key pieces involving the inner workings of the Queen with her ladies. As an audience view this made for a tense, genuinely surprising theatre experience. How rare.

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Hints of surrealism are peppered throughout the film; these were some of our favourite moments. Superimposed images at the end of the film were perfect representation of the moment you realize that all you’ve been working toward isn’t worth what you once thought; the people who warned you were right after all. The editor also had a much more intriguing way of crafting dialogue scenes to allow the viewer to focus more on power dynamics, subtle emotional cues, and reactions of our characters to make them feel more vulnerable, relatable, and human.

Not a single bad performance. Even through the extravagant wigs make-up and costuming the actors shone through. Olivia Coleman was exceptional. It was a real actor’s act-off. Including some surprisingly accurate English accents from the cast.

Low-light shooting, trying new things, it’s astounding they were able to pull this off entirely on 35mm film. Mastered the low-angle show, jaw-dropping dolly-ins and long one-shots.

Not an extremely memorable soundtrack, but really with a film like this that strives on suspense, tension, betrayal a fitting soundtrack would help accentuate these feelings from the film and this soundtrack does just that.

Definitely worth a re-watch in theatres, and extremely curious to hear what happened in the process of filming on the Blu-ray special features.  It leaves you wanting more.

>> 8/10 <<

Pacing: 7/10

Editing: 8/10

Plot: 9/10

Acting: 9.5/10

Cinematography: 9.5/10

Re-watch-ability: 4/10

Soundtrack: 6.5/10