For weeks people have been telling me how great The Favourite is. “You must see it!” they say. “You’ll love it!” they say. “It deserves so many Oscars!”
I don’t really keep up with what’s on at the cinema, as I have a very busy Netflix schedule to attend to. So I found all the Favourite buzz somewhat baffling, particularly as random people kept telling me, with knowing smiles, how much I’d like it. Eventually, I discovered that the film is a royal period drama featuring a demented lesbian love triangle and, suddenly, everything made sense. Because I’m gay, people had the audacity to assume I would automatically love a movie containing Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman cavorting in scenes of a homosexual nature. Which, I mean, yeah, fair enough. I bought a ticket immediately.
Like everyone else in the world, I have now seen The Favourite and, well, I have some opinions. Namely, what is all the fuss about? Why on earth did this fairly mediocre film sweep the board at the Baftas, and why has it been nominated for 10 Oscars? I mean, it wasn’t bad: the acting was brilliant and there were some hilarious moments. It was fun; it just wasn’t amazing. The weirdness everyone was raving about seemed rather self-indulgent. And while I’m sure there was a deep and meaningful reason for using the fisheye lens so much, it felt as if the director had got a fisheye lens for Christmas and couldn’t stop playing with it. As for the weird rabbit stuff … well, actually, I liked the rabbits. The rabbits were good. I wouldn’t mind if the rabbits got an Oscar.
For a while, I fretted about my muted response to the movie. I wondered if I had missed something. I combed through the many rapturous reviews trying to understand the film’s appeal. The Evening Standard told me there was “no doubting the genius of Yorgos Lanthimos’s period drama”, but I just kept doubting and doubting. Why, I wondered, could I not seem to see the genius so many other people saw? Perhaps I needed a fisheye lens.
Having spent some more time thinking upon the matter, I have arrived at a number of theories. My first is generously self-effacing. Namely, that I have the cinematic palate of a small, rather stupid child. After all, my favourite film is Fast & Furious 6, and my second favourite film is Furious 7. But, then again, those are both objectively excellent movies.
My second theory is that if you combine period drama and lesbianism with borderline psychopathic characters, then people automatically think: “Ooh, very artsy, very highbrow, I should probably like it.” Not to mention, we all know that a surefire way to get an Academy Award nod is to put some melancholy homosexuality in your movie. More than 50 straight actors have had Oscar nominations for playing LGBT roles and a lot of these actors play queer people who meet with fairly grim endings. Do you think anyone would be raving about The Favourite if it had involved a demented heterosexual love triangle? Because I don’t.
My third theory is that nobody really cares about The Favourite at all; they just want an excuse to talk about Queen Anne’s sex life. Which, frankly, I find rather unpatriotic. My fourth and final theory is that its appeal has something to do with Brexit. Because, let’s face it, there’s a Brexit angle to everything now.
Arwa Mahdawi also writes The Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday. Subscribe now.
