Yorgos Lanthimos
La favorita

Forget the Oscar nominations, forget The Lobster, watch this film without prejudice and expectations. It is something big, big because it is persistent, tangible, an experience that lingers almost as if the viewer were one of the palace scullions, perhaps a valet, peering into real events with a curious eye.

Lanthimos objectively kicked ass with the 2015 work. Then he made a film I haven’t seen, but already from the title (The Killing of a Sacred Deer), it doesn’t exactly present itself as something accessible to everyone. Now he arrives at the general public, opens a gateway into the world of major productions. Which is not exactly the case when you consider the fifteen million budget, but it’s still something compared to the mere four million of The Lobster. In any case, this time Fox is distributing, the film is more easily found in multiplexes, and it has ten nominations at the biggest session of "mutual back-scratching" of the film year. So yes, we can say Lanthimos is reaching the general public.

This might initially be discouraging, and even after the complete viewing of The Favourite, the more demanding and grumpy viewer might say that "it's not the Lanthimos of yore." Nonsense. One must first accept a change of paradigm, of narrative style, of conceptual density. We are no longer in the realm of corrosive paradoxes and disorienting dialogues; the cinematic communication becomes more linear and flat (at least on the surface), the viewer is guided by the hand, but that's okay. It's okay because we need more "colossal" period pieces like this, more "megaproductions" guided with such care by a very fine authorial mind like Lanthimos's.

A director holding his cards with enviable confidence, dispensing with rare organic detail, visions, dialogues, single words, scars, bloodstains, open or closed doors, corridors, information about the protagonists' past, plays on perspectives, narrative twists, reticences, and revelations. That’s why the film persists, because it’s a bit (quite a bit) more than what is captured during a carefree viewing.

The choice of story to tell is extraordinary, the true stroke of genius of this production. A dystopian future is not needed to probe human foibles; it is enough to dig into "our" past history to spotlight many, infinite putrescent mechanisms that touch power as much as individual ambition, lay bare the inevitable human misery, the impossibility of truly achieving satisfaction in life. In this, the dystopia of The Lobster continues, even more radically, with a leap back of at least three centuries. Here love is even more problematic, because it exists almost solely as a whim, or as an act of oppression, as a form of blackmail, always entangled in the plots of power.

Sex and power are inseparable, and the former is an unavoidable tool of the latter, it almost never comes as a spontaneous disinterested impulse, and when it does, there is always someone ready to exploit it for selfish, political, or individual gain. In this, Sarah and Abigail are two facets of the same rapacity. Those who have power, who have wealth, who have the fortune of being free can do nothing but sacrifice a part to appease their carnal urges. Those who have none of this can only give themselves (and thus sacrifice a part of themselves) in an ultimately futile attempt to free themselves from their subordinate condition.

As you can understand, a period film that deals with topics of today and tomorrow. And it removes that veil of victimization and moral superiority from the female world that is so fashionable lately. Here women have everything or nothing, have something to lose and to gain. They are victims of the poker game, of men and their dissatisfactions, their traumas, their manias. They are in the world, they are part of the world, for better or worse, exactly like men. Each one must sacrifice a piece of herself (or what she has) to survive the world or herself, but without senseless schematization between the role of executioner and that of victim. Everyone is at every moment both victim and executioner.

All of this supported by three actresses in a state of grace, subtly obsessive music, a great array of shots varied, a dry editing, costumes up to the task. In short, Lanthimos continues his fiercely disenchanted discourse, but camouflages it in a more accessible, enjoyable, layered form. So it may also appeal to the most unprepared and casual audience, thanks to the charisma of the actresses and the shamelessness of the dialogues. The underlying unsaid, however, is pregnant with very current "political" meanings (giving oneself to power to obtain something in return, does it ring any bells?). But how many will seize the key to interpretation?

8/10