The Favourite Review

Lanthimos keeps his cruelty and drops his deadpan, and the result is the funniest thing he has made. The script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara turns Queen Anne's court into a closed system where affection is the only currency, and the three leads play it as a knife fight conducted entirely in compliments. Olivia Colman gives Anne gout, grief and seventeen rabbits, and declines to make her either a punchline or a saint. Rachel Weisz plays Sarah Churchill as competence that has never once been questioned, and Emma Stone's Abigail climbs with a survivor's blank patience.

Robbie Ryan lights by candle and window, then reaches for a fisheye that warps the state rooms into fishbowls, which is either the film's sharpest joke about power or its most obvious one. Sandy Powell's monochrome costumes and the harpsichord cues finish the job. The plot is a shape rather than a story, three women rearranging themselves until nobody has won, and the closing dissolve is a mood instead of a conclusion. We admire the performances more than the film assembled around them.