Cara Rouge

The English royals populating Yorgos Lanthimos’ rollicking period drama The Favourite may not know much about the country’s ongoing war with France, but they’re formidable connoisseurs in duck-racing and pineapple-eating. A year after The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the Greek director ventures into a starkly different terrain with a period feature chronicling internecine feuds among early-18th-century English bluebloods. And as if the plunge was not remarkable enough for an auteur known for his bleak and absurdist dystopias, The Favourite marks the first time Lanthimos is not credited as writer.

Penned by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, The Favourite zeroes in on three real-life characters: Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), her best friend and confidante Lady Sarah (Lanthimos’ habitué Rachel Weisz), and Lady Sarah’s cousin, Abigail (a pitch-perfect Emma Stone). In the candid words of Prime Minister hopeful Harley (Nicholas Hoult), one of many wig-wearing politicians and aristocrats idling about the Queen’s palace, Abigail “was once a Lady, now a nothing.” Thrown into poverty by an alcoholic and gambling-addicted father, Abigail shows up to court covered in mud to beg her cousin for a job. Moved by her plight (moved being an euphemism here, as Weisz exudes a ruthless cool that echoes her performance in The Lobster), Lady Sarah sends Abigail to work in the palace’s kitchen, from which she is quickly relieved after successfully ingratiating herself with Queen Anne, thus launching her ascent into the palace’s higher echelons and threatening Lady Sarah’s own spot as the Queen’s best friend and lover.

Roberto Ferri, Recent Paintings.

Masterful recent paintings from Italian artist Roberto Ferri (Previously on Supersonic Art).