The less authorial Yorgos film delights in its technical and artistic quality.

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2019)

"A Favorite" Director Yorgos Lathinos' new film is his least authorial feature, we missed some of the tense script with numb logic and theatrical performances but we gained something more mature and focused without losing his classic soundtrack and sublime camera use. And that just proves that Yorgos is a great director, because even though he's fleeing from his comfort zone, "A Favorite" impresses with technical and artistic issues and consolidates as one of the best films of 2018, in my opinion.
"The Favorite" succeeds in being an uncompromising empowerment film, from non-boring romance to non-monotonous thriller and non-boring comedy, a blend of genres scripted by Deborah Dean and Tony McNamara that works perfectly in the hands of the talented Greek director. We do not have a high moral or a great dilemma, we have only the history of two women surrounding the Queen of England for power or comfort.
The two women in question are played by Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Queen Olivia Colman and James Smith form one of the best performance quartets I have ever seen in a movie. Emma Stone, after winning the Oscar is light and loose, and shows all her artistic ability interpreting multiple facets and feelings making a captivating and disguised character, Rachel Weisz makes a character mature, cold, her performance scares and impresses by the intrinsic violence, and calls more attention if we pull the story of Rachel with characters who are usually "Bobinhos". Olivia Colman plays the most broken character in all, a woman with social and health problems, with a great power in her hand but clumsy intelligence, an exquisite performance that requires an artistic and physical delivery, and lastly, James Smith, the most discreet of all, but his character is fundamental to architect the plots between the trio, in addition to a convincing, funny and cunning performance.
Yorgos uses his cameras, he likes, many against plongee, fish eyes, medium and closed planes, with lots of natural light and a composition of simply perfect scene, added to a great costum, hair and makeup we have a direction of art that borders perfection and very similar to the perfect art direction of "Barry Lyndon", but that reinforcement, is still better thanks to the director's frameworks. Something that remains of Yorgos's classic signature is its incidental soundtrack that matches the film.
The division of the film into mini chapters is not a good choice, it makes the rhythm of the long regret a lot, it is like extending the two hours, and that in the practical sense, it makes no difference, since the acts of the film are well defined. "A Favorita" is a great film, with the very technical and artistic aspect that puts Yorgos Lanthimos in the big showcase of Hollywood.