The Favourite
Given I rarely leave the house, going to the cinema in the afternoon feels like an act of supreme decadence. Its not exactly high kicking down a marble staircase in a backless gown, my lipstick a paste of red wine and cocaine, but it'll do for me.
And as an impressively late adaptor I'm taking advantage of the the reappearance of Oscar scooping comedy historical The Favourite at the QFT, now that everyone else has safely seen it. That's not quite the case though: the theatre is packed full of grunting, farting, wrapper-rustling cineastes this afternoon. I appreciate that it's not my living room and there are going to be other people there and I am trying to be more tolerant, but really - the man sat next to Susie, once he had finished his bag of savoury snack treats sucked, with lip-smacking zeal - every single one of his fingers! He's a ten finger sucker. How can you be an aficionado of Art House cinema and do that in a public space? It reminded me of attending Throwing Muses gigs in London thirty years ago and being simultaneous amazed by the extraordinary music and appalled by the herd of fucking oafs in attendance! What were they getting from this? How was this beautiful music speaking to them? I expected the audience to be black-clad metropolitan sophisticates and I got hairy shouldered men in capped sleeved t-shirts sweatily hitting one another in time to the beat: their body odour cutting through the dry ice, the dandruff turning the light show into an arctic squall.
I'm a snob. Its true. But equally you didn't have to sit next to the slick fingered pig.
This is probably why I'm never a guest on Banterflix - I'd just review my fellow patrons.
I've seen a couple Yorgos Lanthimos films: Dogtooth and The Lobster, and I'm very interested in what he does. The numbed performances. The stilted dialogue. The naturalism of his non-actor extras. The self-conscious surrealism. The flatness of it all; the banality and crumbiness of life bent and pulled and exposed.
The Favourite doesn't really do any of those things. Its a beautiful, funny, nasty, clever film filled with brilliant performances - all three of the leads are flawless. Emma Stone I don't think I've seen in anything before, but she's remarkable here as a never-innocent flatterer and conniver, who licks and kisses her way from the scullery to the Queen's bed. This is the story of Queen Anne - fine furniture abounds, man - and her cloth and wire lovers: Weisz' Sarah Churchill is the Queen's oldest friend and a clever, able woman who tells her the truth and won't take any nonsense. Abigail Hill (Stone) is Churchill's unfortunate cousin who is taken into the Queen's household and claws her way to the top with her knowledge of the uses of herbs (burn the witch!), her pleasant demeanour, her neatly timed subterfuge and her boundless flattery. It is the story of a grief-stricken and sickly woman choosing between the hard woman who loves her but will not lie, and the simpering worm-tongue who will tell her what she wants to hear. Its no surprise which she ultimately chooses.
One of the first things you see in this film is Mark Gatiss in a periwig. Well, of course. He probably brought it from home.
The locations are beautiful: ceilings and floors crowd into each shot and fish-eye lenses bulge to accommodate the grandeur of the setting. The chequerboard floors dictate the costumes, as though this film were an exercise in black and white, but the performances are full of nuance and subtlety.
There are wonderful filthy lines: "A balloon shaped German man with a thin cock," "Godolphin, I have a surge of desire to see your nose broken. Your point?" "That Harley is a fop and a prat and smells like a ninety six year old French whore's vajuju."
This is a very written film and yet one with mesmeric human performances. Olivia Colman's eyes are a window on infinite suffering, pools glittering with melancholy in the guttering candle-light. She is filled with an inner life barely hinted at in her day to day business of shrieking at footmen. In her bedroom she is surrounded by rabbits - each the ghost of a dead child - but she is trapped in an endless warren herself, forever being wheeled through dark secret passages, her gout-ridden feet propped up before her like battering rams, candle wax on the sleeve of her night-dress.
I wonder how this film was made. I wonder who wanted to invest in it. The story is broadly true - these people existed. But the script is arch and theatrical, even when the performances are desperate and feeling. Who builds a film like this? A perfect thing with three gay female leads in period costume, poisoning each other, literally or otherwise. How does this get made? And if it wins an Oscar does that mean other oddball, peculiar, interesting films will get made? I hope so. I doubt it.
By the way if you ever hear me crying out: "Rub my legs" run away. Run away and hide.
And as an impressively late adaptor I'm taking advantage of the the reappearance of Oscar scooping comedy historical The Favourite at the QFT, now that everyone else has safely seen it. That's not quite the case though: the theatre is packed full of grunting, farting, wrapper-rustling cineastes this afternoon. I appreciate that it's not my living room and there are going to be other people there and I am trying to be more tolerant, but really - the man sat next to Susie, once he had finished his bag of savoury snack treats sucked, with lip-smacking zeal - every single one of his fingers! He's a ten finger sucker. How can you be an aficionado of Art House cinema and do that in a public space? It reminded me of attending Throwing Muses gigs in London thirty years ago and being simultaneous amazed by the extraordinary music and appalled by the herd of fucking oafs in attendance! What were they getting from this? How was this beautiful music speaking to them? I expected the audience to be black-clad metropolitan sophisticates and I got hairy shouldered men in capped sleeved t-shirts sweatily hitting one another in time to the beat: their body odour cutting through the dry ice, the dandruff turning the light show into an arctic squall.
I'm a snob. Its true. But equally you didn't have to sit next to the slick fingered pig.
This is probably why I'm never a guest on Banterflix - I'd just review my fellow patrons.
I've seen a couple Yorgos Lanthimos films: Dogtooth and The Lobster, and I'm very interested in what he does. The numbed performances. The stilted dialogue. The naturalism of his non-actor extras. The self-conscious surrealism. The flatness of it all; the banality and crumbiness of life bent and pulled and exposed.
The Favourite doesn't really do any of those things. Its a beautiful, funny, nasty, clever film filled with brilliant performances - all three of the leads are flawless. Emma Stone I don't think I've seen in anything before, but she's remarkable here as a never-innocent flatterer and conniver, who licks and kisses her way from the scullery to the Queen's bed. This is the story of Queen Anne - fine furniture abounds, man - and her cloth and wire lovers: Weisz' Sarah Churchill is the Queen's oldest friend and a clever, able woman who tells her the truth and won't take any nonsense. Abigail Hill (Stone) is Churchill's unfortunate cousin who is taken into the Queen's household and claws her way to the top with her knowledge of the uses of herbs (burn the witch!), her pleasant demeanour, her neatly timed subterfuge and her boundless flattery. It is the story of a grief-stricken and sickly woman choosing between the hard woman who loves her but will not lie, and the simpering worm-tongue who will tell her what she wants to hear. Its no surprise which she ultimately chooses.
One of the first things you see in this film is Mark Gatiss in a periwig. Well, of course. He probably brought it from home.
The locations are beautiful: ceilings and floors crowd into each shot and fish-eye lenses bulge to accommodate the grandeur of the setting. The chequerboard floors dictate the costumes, as though this film were an exercise in black and white, but the performances are full of nuance and subtlety.
There are wonderful filthy lines: "A balloon shaped German man with a thin cock," "Godolphin, I have a surge of desire to see your nose broken. Your point?" "That Harley is a fop and a prat and smells like a ninety six year old French whore's vajuju."
This is a very written film and yet one with mesmeric human performances. Olivia Colman's eyes are a window on infinite suffering, pools glittering with melancholy in the guttering candle-light. She is filled with an inner life barely hinted at in her day to day business of shrieking at footmen. In her bedroom she is surrounded by rabbits - each the ghost of a dead child - but she is trapped in an endless warren herself, forever being wheeled through dark secret passages, her gout-ridden feet propped up before her like battering rams, candle wax on the sleeve of her night-dress.
I wonder how this film was made. I wonder who wanted to invest in it. The story is broadly true - these people existed. But the script is arch and theatrical, even when the performances are desperate and feeling. Who builds a film like this? A perfect thing with three gay female leads in period costume, poisoning each other, literally or otherwise. How does this get made? And if it wins an Oscar does that mean other oddball, peculiar, interesting films will get made? I hope so. I doubt it.
By the way if you ever hear me crying out: "Rub my legs" run away. Run away and hide.
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