THE FAVOURITE | Yorgos Lanthimos: Kino des Unbehagens - Black Box im Filmmuseum Düsseldorf

THE FAVORITE 

UK·IR·USA 2018 · 120 min · Original version with subtitles · digital DCP · FSK 12 · Dir.: Yorgos Lanthimos · Writ.: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara · Cinematography: Robbie Ryan · Starring: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, Mark Gatiss, and others

At the beginning of the 18th century, the impoverished Abigail Hill arrives at the court of Queen Anne of England with the help of her cousin Sarah Churchill. Sarah is not only married to the kingdom’s most successful military commander—and thus the Duchess of Marlborough—but also a strategic advisor and the queen’s closest confidante—so close, in fact, that the two are having a secret affair. When Abigail learns of this, she does not make it public but instead seeks to use the knowledge she has gained in her own unique way.

This period drama, which incorporates a number of real historical events, is not only unusually classical in its narrative form by Lanthimos’s standards, but also explores historians’ speculations as to whether Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough were simply bound by an unusually strong personal friendship at the time, or whether the two women actually had a lesbian relationship.