Visually Beautiful Palace Intrigue In

CHICAGOLAWBULLETIN.COM FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2018

Volume 164, No. 253 Serving Chicago’s legal community for 164 years

Visually beautiful palace intrigue in ‘Favo u ri t e’ e eagerly consume and games of nude dodgeball the biopics of the played with red fruits, are ridicu- great queens of lous fops. The most voluminous England —E l i z a - wig and heavily plastered white- beth I, Victoria, face belong to the outrageous To- ElizabethW II, Freddie Mercury. ry leader Lord Harley (Nicholas Yet the life of Queen Anne, who RE B E C CA Hoult), not friend so much as co- reigned from 1702 to 1714, was L. FORD conspirator to Abigail. anything but great. Poorly The women, by contrast, never schooled, cripplingly insecure and have a moment of pleasure or of chronically poor health, Anne Rebecca L. Ford is counsel to Scharf frivolity. Sex, drinking and danc- died childless at age 49 having Banks Marmor LLC, and concentrates her ing are all occasions to further suffered 17 miscarriages and still- practice on complex litigation, compliance, court intrigue. Every move in the births. board governance and specialized chess game between Sarah and employment issues. She is the former In “The Favourite,”director Yor- executive vice president for litigation and Abigail leaves a winner and a los- gos Lanthimos (“The Lobster”) intellectual property at MGM. She can be er in its wake. The two continue imagines a carnal, psychological reached at [email protected]. thus until, in the final checkmate, and political competition between everyone loses. Lady Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Costume designer Sandy Pow- Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) and q u e e n ’s constant companion and ell, who also fashioned “Mary Pop- her disgraced cousin, Abigail erotic accessory. pins Returns,”takes dazzling Masham (Emma Stone), for the fa- We root for Abigail until we risks, mixing modern fabrics — vor and control of the erratic and realize that cunning is no indi- laser cut leathers, denim, African unhappy queen (Olivia Colman). cator of competence, and we’re prints —with true-to-period sil- Colman, soon to star as Queen shocked when she devolves into houettes for the women’s dresses. Elizabeth II in Season 3 of the desultory cruelty, squishing un- Powell has already won three Netflix series “The Crown,”ga i n e d derfoot one of the fluffy bunnies Academy Awards for Best Cos- 25 pounds to play the gout-strick- Anne caches in her room as tume Design and is likely to nom- en, corpulent Queen Anne. She stand-ins for her lost children. inated for one or both of her 2018 pushes physical and dramatic With comic audacity, Lanthimos r e l e a s e s . boundaries with her performance, integrates absurdist surprises into Shot in 35 mm, “The Favourite” portraying the power and piteous- what is otherwise a full-on cos- is visually beautiful, almost tac- ness, the longing and isolation of a tume drama. tile. Lanthimos and cinematogra- lonely, childlike monarch. pher Robbie Ryan make Colman is all but guaran- frequent use of fisheye teed an Oscar nod in Jan- [W]ith their painted-doll lenses and up-from-below u a r y. camera angles. These un- Yet as the imperious faces, flamboyant wigs …and usual choices add a Sarah, Weisz’s perfor- games of nude dodgeball …[ th e squeezing claustrophobia mance is as sublime as to the film’s overall feel of C o l m a n’s is histrionic. Like men] are ridiculous fops. edgy instability. Weisz herself, Sarah’s beau- With his surrealist sen- ty and confidence are her super- In one scene, Sarah and the fu- sibility, Lanthimos has carved out powers. She wields them without ture Baron Masham (Joe Alwyn) a cinematic lane that is his alone. thought of moderation or fear of dance to entertain the queen. “The Favourite”is an 18th cen- overreaching, until a rival appears They carry on with a modern jit- tury “All About Eve”with an O. on the scene. terbug until Masham spins off into Henry ending. S t o n e’s freckled, underdog a solo lifted from the “Soul Train” With its rich look and many earnestness permeates her Abi- dance lines of the 1970s. fine performances, it is a film that gail, who, through flattery and The film’s male characters, with deservedly is highly praised. Yet I strategy, ascends from scullery their painted-doll faces, flamboy- am obliged to admit, it was not maid to displace Sarah as the ant wigs of Cowardly Lion curls, my favorite.