10 Oscar nominations, positive reviews from all sides, a trio of actresses in a state of grace, an emerging director that everyone likes and that the public has difficulty understanding.
These 2 lines could be enough to attract or reject you from the vision of "La Favorita", the last work of the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos.
The truth is that 20 pages would not be enough to tell you about the film, to offer you so many cues to recover it and so many to not do it.
Lanthimos is one of the most difficult contemporary directors to interpret, one of those who give films that do not give a clear conclusion.
You leave the cinema strange, confused and often, on first reflection, disappointed. Physiological disappointment is the one that strikes the average viewer who thought he went out to admire and escape into a linear and simple story, however deep and masterfully told, and finds himself having to deal with the greatest spectre of our century: THE REFLECTION.
Yes, because for us accustomed to not thinking, accustomed to jump from one news to another, from one app to another, from one place to another, from one chat to another, it's very hard to undergo a film that induces us to think about what we have seen in the previous 2 hours.
It's not so much the story itself but the message it wants to convey that sends us into a panic.
What does it mean? What did that last long shot mean? And why the triple fade? And why the continuous references to the three women who alone devour an entire film? Lanthimos doesn't slap us in the face, but slaps, kicks and punches us throughout the film. Distressing music that contrasts with the pungent irony of the film, ducks chasing each other and naked men hitting each other with fresh oranges that contrast with a war never seen before, but which claims victims every second that passes. One woman screams, another enjoys, another woman cries, another woman laughs, and often it is the same woman, the same character, who gets carried away by all these conflicting emotions and expressions.
La Favorita is a film that plays on contrasts, that dares, that drags, that gets loved and hated and that ends when we were not yet ready to finish and starts when we were not yet ready to carburet. In between there is a lot of stuff but above all an excessive story that finds balance thanks to 3 very strong women who will also prove to be clamorously fragile for different reasons. A queen who doesn't want and doesn't know how to govern and who would only want her existence to end. A strong woman par excellence but collapsed under the weight of her tragedies. A noblewoman of the palace who would like to be queen, a woman without hair on her tongue and stomach who will end up the victim of her greatest weakness: power. A woman who came from nowhere, a slave of the men who made fun of her all her youth, but who now wants to become someone that no one will ever have the courage to face again. She too will end up being sucked into the weaknesses of court, perhaps feminine or more simply and universally human weaknesses.
And then in this mosaic emerges the skill of the 3 actresses, 3 candidates for the 2019 Oscars, a winner who until 15 years ago was in charge of cleaning and who today raises the most coveted statuette thanks to a crazy and fragile role. Olivia Colman is soft and scary, creating a four-dimensional character like few others. Victim, executioner, emptied, impetuous, submissive, crazy, tender, accomplice, proud, weak. You can find everything in one. Emma Stone is a sort of female Joker, a Joker disguised as Bambi and who throughout the film plays on a two-dimensionality of character, tone and behavior really unique. A tightrope walker on a very thin red thread that never breaks.
Rachel Weisz seems to be the most linear one but she is the protagonist of the less linear destiny among all. Proud, rigid, severe, brutal, cynical, she permeates the film with an aura of Cruella Demon able to love, reflect, forgive when you least expect it and also for this reason able to fail, rise again and again trying to stay afloat in a world so jagged.
The Favorita is an upside down "The Crown", a crown on the head of a lost and sad queen who will end up depressing and taking an entire kingdom hostage. And then the human dimension returns preponderant in a context where tragedies affect kings as well as subjects, the psyche is weak in courtiers and nobles, the desire to be loved has no boundaries and knows no families.
Lanthimos tries to remind us of this. In his own way. He doesn't care about us or our psyche.
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