Eavesdropping At The Movies

Greek weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos, whose off-kilter thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer divided and provoked us a year ago, brings us The Favourite, a wild dramatisation of the power games surrounding Queen Anne's bedchamber in the early 18th century. It's his first feature on which neither he nor his usual partner Efthymis Filippou is credited as a writer, and that might account for its liveliness compared to his previous work, which tends to offer significant downtime in which the audience can ponder what it's seeing. The Favourite moves rapidly and fluidly, the shifting dynamics between Olivia Colman's Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz's Lady Marlborough, and Emma Stone's Abigail Hill constantly exciting, with their plans always subject to change depending on who knows what about others. And on top of the intrigue, it's really, really funny. The Favourite offers us a brilliantly cast and even more brilliantly performing female trio, picking on a rare historical moment in which all the most important and influential