The Favourite

The Favourite presents itself as a gleefully anarchic romp through 18th century court politics, yet beneath its baroque excess and vicious comedy lies a film deeply preoccupied with contemporary sensibilities around gender and desire. Lanthimos populates his film almost entirely with female characters occupying positions of power, intrigue, and moral complexity, a deliberate inversion of historical hierarchies that announces itself through the sheer numerical dominance of women in every frame. The central relationship between Queen Anne and her two favorites is explicitly romantic and physical, with no apology or heterosexual framing, suggesting that same-sex desire is simply the texture of these women's lives rather than a revelation to be gasped over by the audience.

Yet the film's progressive elements coexist uneasily with its fundamental cynicism about power itself. Every character is ruthless, duplicitous, and motivated by base appetites. The women here do not seek liberation or dignity; they seek control and pleasure, often at the expense of others. This is not feminism in any aspirational sense, but rather a kind of nihilistic gender inversion where women are permitted to be as petty, cruel, and self-serving as any male-dominated historical narrative might portray men. One might call this subversive, though whether subversion that merely mirrors patriarchal vice constitutes meaningful progressive commentary remains an open question. The film's refusal to offer moral clarity or character redemption feels less like a challenge to existing power structures and more like a shrug.

The production values and craft are undeniable, and the performances from Stone, Colman, and Weisz suggest a film interested in complex female interiority. Yet Lanthimos remains committed to aesthetic provocation over political substance. His baroque compositions, his occasional forays into visual distortion, his deployment of anachronistic music and language, all serve the god of style rather than any coherent vision of social consciousness. The Favourite is a film that has been embraced by progressive audiences precisely because it features women and queer desire in a historical setting, but its actual engagement with the implications of its own progressive markers remains superficial. It is a film that looks the part while maintaining a studied distance from genuine critique.