The Favourite (2018)

This is my first review for the Blog. Thanks for reading this.

When I got to know about a new movie from director Yorgos Lanthimos, I was excited. His last two movies "The Lobster" (2015) and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" (2017) were really memorable thanks to their quirkiness and bizarre stories. Perhaps because of their craziness these movies ended up being kept under the general public radar and collecting accolades instead from a limited audience and in various film festivals circuits. With “The Favourite” Yorgos has what is probably his most accessible movie to date, being able to appeal to the mainstream audience. Indeed it has ended up in many movie critics’ top 10 movies list for 2018 and has 10 Academy Awards nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and acting nodes to its 3 actresses) under its belt!!

Alas as in so many situations where expectations have been set so high, I found “The Favourite” to be my least favourite from Yorgos. My main problem here is I miss the quirkiness and the unpredictable style of Yorgos's previous movies. Perhaps its because he is not dealing with his own original story this time, with the story supposedly based on real historical events and people. Don't get me wrong however. I am not saying the movie is bad. It's far from it! There are plenty to savour here from the glorious costumes and palace set pieces, to the scandalous tale, and delightfully colourful characters which comes alive through our three actresses’ performances. Indeed if this was directed by anyone else but Yorgos, I would have showered it with a glowing review. However, for me, Yorgos's involvement with this movie served as an injustice to it, as I ended up waiting in vain for his trademark craziness to kick in.

My verdict? Good but not great ... definitely worthy of a watch. My prediction on its Oscar fate? I think it shall probably lose out on all the major awards and end up being satisfied with just a technical award or two.