Wednesday 16 January 2019

Video: 'The Favourite' vs 'Queen Anne'

Here’s a little video comparing what I thought about ‘The Favourite’ to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘Queen Anne’.



Mini-review (ish) of ‘The Favourite’

Recently, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film, ‘The Favourite’ has been picking up awards and pleasing critics. Not much of a critic myself, I was given cinema vouchers for Christmas that meant I could go and see it without paying the ludicrous ticket prices. 

The cinema was packed and there was a hushed silence as the film began. There were a few laughs and titters as the film progressed. I enjoyed myself very much for most of the runtime. At one point it felt that the film was gearing up to a big final act, it seemed a bit late in but I was ready for some sort of climax… then it finished. Most of the other patrons of the cinema looked as confused and let-down as I felt.

This is not to say that the performers weren’t very good and the script entertaining, they certainly were. I thought Olivia Coleman managed to be both grotesque and appealing in equal measure (much as she did as Sophie in ‘Peep Show’). Rachel Weisz was all hard-bitten pragmatism but also an undercurrent of deep and gentle love, while Emma Stone seemed a lost innocent until she rapidly wasn’t.

The film stuck with me more than films usually do, I revisited scenes and moments in my head. The ludicrous dance scene got funnier, the sense of loss and ‘wrong-ness’ at the end grew larger and after a few days, the story which had existed as pieces came together. 


Ultimately, it’s a good film but I’m not sure I’ll revisit it the way I did ‘Lady Susan’, which had a similar (though lighter) tone.


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