Interesting and intriguing

Rating: 7/10 (2 November 2019)

Early 18th century. Queen Anne is the monarch of England. Her closest friend, confidant and adviser is Lady Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Lady Sarah's cousin Abigail comes to the palace, hoping for a job. She used to have status but has fallen on hard times. With Lady Sarah's help Abigail gets a job as a maid. However, her ambitions are much higher than that.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, which made me sceptical about this movie. Lanthimos's previous two movies - The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer - were pretentious, pointless, random nonsense. Here, however, he adds a fair degree of much-needed substance to the style, creating a movie that is intriguing and interesting, even funny, while set against actual historic events. There's still a fair bit of unnecessary style-over-substance scenes (and sounds - the jarring music was annoying at times) but for the most part this is a good story.
Lanthimos makes use of some innovative techniques to enhance the atmosphere. The use of fisheye lens shots was highly original and gives a great sense of the vastness, and emptiness, of the palace.
Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are great in the main roles. Colman as Queen Anne is superb and well deserved her Best Actress Oscar. Solid supporting cast that includes Nicholas Hoult and Mark Gatiss.
The ending is a bit flat though. I was hoping for something more powerful and profound.