Yorgos, please come home!

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2019)

I have witnessed how the careers of non-American filmmakers who were once nonconformist, critical and rebellious, changed when they received awards from Los Angeles, New York and, to a lesser extent, European film festivals. I am not questioning the awards, for I believe that when someone deserves a prize, it is fair to grant it. The unfortunate thing is that, to guarantee a position in the factory of mainstream cinema, some filmmakers who previously questioned the bad side of "what is established", become submissive and conformist when they receive Oscars, Globes and other awards; others lose the strength of their radical positions, while a few renounce the cultural force that their first films had, which were made in their homelands.
Two illustrative cases are those of Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar and Mexican Alfonso Cuarón. In the first case, although the man from La Mancha preserves the "Spanish cultural brand" that has made his cinema always attractive, his recent films conform to a catalog of common places in melodrama, applauded by a group of moviegoers who never saw his imperfect and corrosive, passionate and exemplary cinema that he made in the 1980s. Then there is Cuarón, the traveler who, from his applauded debut in Mexico jumped to Hollywood, to little princesses, Harry Potter and Dickens, recovering his original cultural stamp each time he returns to Mexico, although «Roma», his 2018 movie, shows him as an orchestrator of an excessively elaborate exercise for the Netflix era. Both men are talented and know their trade, there is no doubt about it, but from «Matador« to «Hable con ella» there is an abyss, similar to that between «Sólo con tu pareja» and «Gravity».
Now the "evil eye" has touched Greek Yorgos Lanthimos. Here the transformation breaks one's heart. He even poses differently for the photos now: from those, in which the daring novice appeared in the projections of «Dogtooth», to those of Yorgos 2019, it has rained a lot. He already directed Kidman, Farrell, Weisz, because he also has talent and know his trade, of course... If in the next installment of the Oscars to 2018 films, I had to choose between Cuarón and Lanthimos for the Best Direction award, I would give the prize to the Athenian.
It is true that «The Favourite» is the kind of costume piece that the British have been making for centuries with their eyes closed. They are perfectly assembled, resplendent and cold, whoever makes them, including Taiwanese Ang Lee. This version, however, is more passionate, Mediterranean and some features of the Lanthimos of «Dogtooth» and «Alps» persist, as postmodern licenses in language, in a few scenes such as dance, and in the use of music. It also has three performers at the peak of the acting profession (Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman) to illustrate this historic portrait of the struggle for power, tinged with eroticism and opportunism. The stories of women in love have always sold a lot. Both men and women lose their composure with an erotic triangle of women, especially when one is Queen Anne of England with her sufferings of gout.
And, yes, concessions to fashion are welcome to develop a career in the West and guarantee a job. But the court intrigues extended for two long hours... and I, at least, could not help thinking "Pity of Yorgos ...!" A fact, in my opinion, very important to take into account: unlike his four previous features ("The Lobster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", in addition to the two already mentioned), this was not written by Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthymis Filippou. It is a pity.