“If you look like a badger, I’m going to tell you that you look like a badger because that’s what love is.” If that’s really true, then Queen Anne (Olivia Colman, in what will arguably be her “breakout” performance from being remembered as Sophie in Peep Show) does not want Duchess of Marlborough Sarah Churchill’s (Rachel Weisz) brand of love, but instead her new firm favourite’s, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone, in a performance that far outshines the one she received an Oscar for in La La Land). Abigail, like all who ascend slowly and then suddenly, begins at the bottom, making her way to the queen’s palace in a carriage on the hope of a letter from her aunt endearing her to her cousin, who happens to be Sarah. That she shows up covered in mud after being directed into the Duchess’ quarters as part of some tongue-in-cheek hazing on the part of the other servants, who seem to sense that she’s “fallen far” and therefore has an annoyingly haughty air about her, does not help her cause in immediate social climbing.
But Abigail seems to be no stranger to biding time, waiting for the right moment, or, in this case, the right piece of information to fall into her lap. It all begins as a direct result of the aforementioned hazing, when her co-workers don’t feel inclined to remind her dainty ass to wear gloves when scrubbing the floor with lye (you know, the entity that was central to the plot of the documentary Crazy Love). Thus, her hand burns to the point of inspiring her to get creative by retrieving her own special remedy in the woods, where she first encounters Samuel Masham (Joe Alwyn), a lord of the court who will prove instrumental to her cause, but, for the time being, merely sees her as a curious servant who somehow managed to steal a horse to ride into the woods. When he confronts her about it later as a means to talk to her, he chides, “I should have you stripped and whipped.” “I’m waiting,” she says with the coquettish boldness she knows will pay off in further alluring him despite only being interested in what securing a title from him would mean for her position.
Her “altruistic” act of sneaking into the queen’s room to put the homemade ointment on her legs (leg pain being one of many ailments Queen Anne suffers from amid her long-standing deteriorating health), is, to be sure, a means to begin to ingratiate herself into the queen’s favor, parading such comments as, “I must have caught a cold from fetching herbs for your ointment.” The queen, of course, is highly susceptible to charm and flattery, particularly since Sarah engages in neither of these things with her despite being her closest confidante. But then, it is said that those closest to you are harshest, taking liberties in the realm of causticness that they would never dare to with mere acquaintance-level sorts. Anne can’t quite see it that way as she, with surprising defenselessness, lets Abigail into her heart the moment she is sent in Sarah’s stead to spend time with the queen (her excuse being the need to tend to some matters of state that Anne is clearly too blacked out to handle herself). All it takes is Abigail’s “earnest” remarks on and attention to her seventeen rabbits, representations of every child she’s lost, to put the queen under her spell.
Sarah instantly recognizes that she’s made a mistake in showing Abigail the kindness and privilege of being her own servant, manifest in their conversation while shooting birds together as Sarah informs Abigail that she won’t need to have any direct dealings with the queen any longer. It is at this moment that an underling comes to inform Abigail that she is wanted by the queen. This act sends Sarah into a jealous spiral that doesn’t quit as the film progresses, showcasing the strange juxtaposition of love against power, and how, so often, there is no feeling more powerful than that of knowing you are desired. This, too, applies to another recent comedy of manners set in the same period, Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship. Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale), in fact, is like a less vilely presented version of Abigail, for both are women seeking to get back to their original station in life by appealing to the right people through the form of subterfuge that is conveyed through empty politesse.
In many ways a character study of Queen Anne and her fragility, Lanthimos’ go-to editor, Yorgos Mavropsaridis, finds numerous tactics with which to showcase her extreme frailty and emotional instability–from low-angle shots to tight close-ups, as well as the frequent and curveball usage of the fisheye lens being one of many aspects of the Lanthimos/Mavropsaridis style that serves to lend the audience the same tense and claustrophobic feeling (in a very enlarged palatial space, mind you) as his rowing rivals. With the massiveness of the estate finding it necessary to constantly push Queen Anne back and forth in her wheelchair across the great lengths of the ornate hallways, there are certain times when it harkens back to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Or even when, during a dance between Sarah and Samuel that prompts a fit of jealous rage from Anne, the modern style of their movements (almost vogueing at certain points) reminds one of the Coppola rendering of a period film (as opposed to a Dolce and Gabbana commercial).
Set against the backdrop of a house divided with regard to continuing the war against France or not, Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult), the First Earl of Oxford and Earl of Mortimer, preys upon the overt faltering in the formerly ironclad relationship between Anne and Sarah by digging his hooks into Abigail, who digs her own into him right back by wielding him as an advocate for her marriage to Samuel. This artful maneuvering, of course, must be done during an absence cleverly inflicted by Abigail, who has already managed to oust Sarah’s order to have her demoted back to her original station in the palace. Her craftiness in so doing is a result of a classic move: crying wolf. After Sarah throws a series of books at her in the library, Abigail takes it to the next level by beating her own face with a book and then crying in front of the queen’s door to incite the appropriate attention and favor over it. And, besides, as Anne puts it to Sarah as she is about to get into her carriage with Abigail, “I like the way her tongue feels on my cunt.” Because it isn’t just that good help is hard to find, but also good head.
While the screenplay, written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, is a fantastical account of history, there are kernels of truth to the clearly well-researched subversion of it. For instance, when Anne screams, “Everyone leaves me… or dies!” after the duchess mysteriously disappears, it is an unequivocal nod to the loss of Anne’s grandmother, aunt and mother in rapid succession by the time she had reached the age of four. Her mental state compounded by health issues that plagued her from the outset, including an eye condition known as defluxion (which the viewer gets a complete portrait of by Act Three), Anne is understandably self-conscious, therefore disposed to Abigail’s brand of false flattery regarding her appearance (e.g. saying she has “lustrous” hair).
With Abigail increasingly poised to deliver the K.O. to the Sarah/Anne dynamic through her carefully curated compliments, it becomes apparent that being the favourite is not without its remarkable unpleasantness, as the final scene spotlights wielding, again, the distinctive editing style of the film via superimposed images.
As Madonna once said in “Rescue Me,” “Love is understanding.” So maybe Sarah didn’t truly love Queen Anne as she genuinely believed she did. For if she had, she might have been able to fathom the queen’s proneness to constantly testing just how loyal a friend and lover can really be. Though some might call this Borderline Personality Disorder.
“You still think you’ve won, don’t you?” Sarah demands toward the end. Abigail looks back at her as though she might be unhinged and states what she feels is the obvious with, “I have.” Sarah returns, “We’re playing at two very different games.” Abigail balks, “All I know is, your carriage awaits and a servant is about to bring me something called a pineapple.”
While Weisz is always brilliant in every role she takes on (of late, it would seem, going for the lesbian ones as evidenced by the recent Disobedience, a.k.a. Sebastián Lelio’s first English-language movie), it is Stone who very much proves herself the favourite indeed of this film, one moment in particular a shining testament to this as she blasély gives a hand job to her husband on their wedding night and ruminates, “My life is like a maze. Every time, I think I’ve solved it, there’s another wall in front of me.” This, ironically, is the very line that might make her the most empathetic character of The Favourite.
