poor things (w&d lanthimos, w. tony mcnamara)

I realise this is a stretch, but it crossed my mind that Lanthimos’ film is perhaps stepsister to Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, which I saw on the Montevideo stage last year. Like Faustus, Bella Baxter goes on an educational tour of Europe (the Grand Tour). Like Faustus, hers is a voyage of discovery: the limits of human pleasure, and power. Faustus is almost the anti-Hamlet, the proto-magic cyborg, who can indulge his whims at will, just as Bella does. Like Faustus, Bella satisfies her desires in an almost mechanical fashion, bereft of any eroticism. For all the sex in Lanthimos’ film, it is doggedly anti-erotic, in a Barthesian or Bataille-esque sense: this is sex as ‘furious jumping’ rather than an exploration of temptation or transgression. Faustus is a child of the devil; Bella Baxter is a child of a Scottish Frankenstein - neither are their own person, even if Lanthimos twists the tale at the end to suggest that this is where she is headed. Bella’s encounter with the radical sex worker echoes Faustus’ visit to Heidelberg, which is echoed by Hamlet’s academic companionship. All of which makes Bella a kind of Faust de nos jours, only one who rather than being condemned to hell, is rewarded for her vaulting ambition, as she is rebirthed into a 21st C variation of the happy nuclear family, with her husband, her lover and her tamed monster in a garden of Eden. If Marlowe’s Faust represents the last cry of medieval man, whose blind faith in magic/ knowledge will soon give way to Hamlet’s alienation, does Lanthimos’ Bella Baxter represent the last gasp of optimism in the possibilities of five centuries of faith in science and its empiricism? 

the favourite (d. yorgos lanthimos; w. deborah davis, tony mcnamara)

Lanthimos may well clean up at the oscars. In a similar vein to Jenkins with Moonlight a few years ago: the indie world sneaking in to steal the crown. Moonlight and The Favourite are very different films, sin dudas, but they have this in common: a technical bravura, which says as much about the work of the DOP as the director. In the case of James Laxton, the bold use of colour; in the case of Robbie Ryan, the nerve to use innovative perspective in a period piece, notably the fish-eye lens shots which capture a wealth of detail in the frame, as well as offering a ‘modern’ eye on this antiquated world. The Favourite’s popularity is also down to offering three actresses the opportunity to strut their stuff. The performances of Coleman, Stone and Weisz possess a verve which complements this contemporary vision of a period piece. They feel like real people, battling out their bizarre menage a trois, people one can identify with, no matter how remote and distant the world of wigs and periwinkles might be. 

On the other hand, The Favourite, in keeping with The Lobster, is a film that entertains rather than engaging on an emotional level. The script creates a world of feckless characters whose primary motivation is to screw each other over. It’s interesting to note in this regard that Sarah Churchill, Weisz’s character, was a mother, as well as being a dashing bisexual. Children are written out of this world, which is a playground for childlike adults. The contrast with Dogtooth is intriguing: whilst Dogtooth also depicted a cold, harsh world, this was predicated on the interactions of a family, which gave the harshness a pathos which The Favourite never seems to aspire to. In that sense, despite the director being Greek and the final draft of the script being written by an Australian, it manages to feel like a very British film, where wit and a cold heart trump feeling every time.