Daniel’s review published on Letterboxd:
This being my introduction to Yorgos Lanthimos' work, I didn't really know what I expected other than fantastic performances from Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, as well as, and especially Olivia Colman, who hasn't missed a beat from my experience.
The Favourite is such a refreshing take on the envy/scum-beneath-your-nails tale, because it centers on people who couldn't be further apart, but ironically so surrounded by four walls that viciously glue them together.
It's gorgeously shot (Robbie Ryan's cinematography is one for the ages), Lanthimos' direction subverts any kind of possible fever dream I could've ever possibly conjured up before digesting the entire 2-hr runtime, the hypnotic sets, the larger-than-life costumes, the taunting score, the aggressively calm lighting, and the phenomenal, pre-praised performances all-in-all, make for but a trip back to that English era, yet a peek behind a curtain we wouldn't dare discover through the lens of despicable nature.
A ping-pong match, if you will... though, imagine the ping-pong ball being a person who deserves just as much empathy as those who give it to her.
So many emotions in too confined of a space, and yet, arguably, this is like the Parasite of 2018 for me (had I seen it earlier, I would've undoubtedly made the correlation accordingly lmfao).
Yeah, this is punishing, but it's also breathtaking, it's beautiful, it's hilarious, it's painful, it's almost cringey in that "don't you fucking dare" sense, and it's got this palpitating grasp on a cinematic narrative that doesn't cease to capture/reflect the turmoil a lot of us may feel every now and again, sometimes even allowing it to manifest itself into the seemingly unforgiveable.
Having said that, this movie is pretty heckin' pretty, and it + its gobsmacking performances left me with a single thought as soon as the credits rolled: the "B" in "duck" stands for "bitch".