The last days of the morbidly wretched Queen Anne and her grotesque court of intriguing favourites of all sexes

Rating: 10/10 (17 August 2019)

This is a disturbingly unsympathetic film, enterprising a thorough insight into the goings-on at the court of the old dying Queen Anne, totally invalidated and rather potty and wholly at the mercy of wicked favourites who grow the worse the more influence on her they get. There is not one sympathetic person in the plot, unless you try to mobilize some absurd sympathy for the Queen, like all her courtiers and favourites never tire of cultivating a maximum of hypocrisy of affection for her just to keep a finger in the pie. Rachel Weisz carries the burden of the play with magnificent splendour as usual, for once you can see even her truly nasty, she is almost the only man in the context, while Emma Stone starts well to develop more and more into another mummy and dummy like all the others, doing anything just to stick to her situation. There are some notable anachronisms in this otherwise perfectly realistic costume drama of the first decade of the 18th century, like music by Schubert and Schumann and Emma Stone saying "OK" and a modern word a number of times, but what perfect palace is completely dustfree? The most difficult part is that of the Queen, impeccably sustained and made totally convincing by Olivia Colman, but all the actors are perfect in their vicious and revolting characters, as is the direction, the cinematography, the composition of the film, in brief, everything - but it's a nasty story, and the more so for being true.