First published on the "Not Dispersed" official account
Just when we thought that the Greek director Lance Moss used "Dog Tooth", "Lobster", and "Death of the Deer" to perform strange talks in succession, and that he has become a school and his creative style has been finalized, so he brought his new work "The Beloved." Entering this year's Venice Film Festival, the audience was shocked and amazed.
This "Favourite" completely walked out of his former safe zone and upgraded it into a comedy with a lot of laughter in a different way. It’s no wonder that the movie has an excellent reputation, with a score of 91 points on Metacritic, and the freshness of rotten tomatoes is 100%. The Guardian gave him a high score of four and a half stars, and Indiewire scored A- and called it "Lance Moss' top work", which may be what Lans Moss has got since "Dog Tooth" Best evaluation.
Lance Moss in the past was a bit weird.
In "Dog Tooth", Lansmos deconstructs the disordered relationship in a totalitarian family, and the movie is full of violent and twisted plots. In "Lobster", Lance Moss sets up a weird future of "being single for a long time to become an animal". He tries to analyze intimacy, so that the film presents a dystopian picture of the end of the world. In "Death of the Sacred Deer", Lansmos curses a family with "medical trouble", and the homomorphic revenge like a religious metaphor makes the movie full of horror.
It can be said that the concept of Lansmos is the first in these works, and the setting of the movie is played to the extreme, which has also led to a very polarized evaluation of the movie. No wonder that sometimes, Lance Moss gives people the feeling of a young and gentle version of Lars von Trier. Directors who are overly stylized tend to go to extremes. For example, I don’t like "Lobster", which has excellent settings but is played off in the second half, and certain works by Lars von Trier.
However, in "The Beloved", Lance Moss no longer serves as a screenwriter for his own movies, and the script of "The Beloved" finally jumps out of the "Lans Moss" universe. Be grounded and become more "human".
Note: There are spoilers for key plot content below
"The Beloved" is a court comedy based on the real historical events of Sarah Churchill (played by Rachel Vichy) and Queen Anne, Duchess of Marlborough.
John Churchill, Duke of Marbo, was a British military strategist and politician who made great achievements in the Anglo-French War. And his wife Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marbo, is smart and bold but irritable. She is a close friend of Queen Anne (played by Olivia Coleman), the daughter of James II, and she has the most Influential advisors and female officials. It can be said that the Duchess of Marbo has long dominated the Queen's decision-making and actually controlled the affairs of the court.
While she was favored, her salary was as high as ￡5,100 a year, and she also urged the queen to support her husband’s warfare, until another female official, Abigail (Emma Stone) took advantage of the vacancy. After retiring from the post of female officer of the Duchess, her friendship with the Queen officially broke down, and her husband and her husband stepped down into exile.
In order to highlight the power struggle between the Duchess of Marlborough and Abigail in history, "Favorite" delineated the pattern of the film within the palace and became a veritable "Gong Fight" movie.
Speaking of "Gong Dou", we Chinese audiences are too familiar with it. Not to mention the classic Gongdou dramas such as "Golden Branch Desire", "Gongsmanship", "Zhen Huan Biography", etc., the just-finished "Strategy of Yanxi Palace" and the popular "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" are all topics that people talk about. . Lance Moss filming such a theme of palace fighting may make Chinese audiences think of pediatrics. May I ask if there are few palace fighting tricks we have seen? Indeed, in "The Beloved," the means of fighting women's palaces are nothing more than self-harming and poisoning. It is nothing unusual. The real subversion of "Favorite" is that the historical facts of the Duchess Marlbo and Abigail's rivalry with Queen Anne turned into a lesbian love triangle.
From the perspective of the play, "The Beloved" reminds people of Kubrick's "Barry Linton", which also came to the top through means. "The Beloved" also reminds people of the French Versailles court lace film "Goodbye," because of the lesbian plot. My Queen. However, "Beloved" is obviously farther than "Goodbye, My Queen". The keynote of "Favourite" is a comedy, with humorous stalks everywhere, causing laughter from time to time in the audience at the Venice Film Festival.
Not to mention that in order to satirize the court’s obscenity, it gave the Queen love to raise rabbits, the royal family loves to play duck racing, throw tomatoes naked, and dance modern dances. It is also pungent and stimulating in language and takes great pains: the Duchess of Malboa actually He scolded the queen and said that she slept as ugly as a shot wolverine; Abigail seduced Marsham, played by Joe Alvin, and said that a gentleman should "rape" her. Unobstructed vulgar language and unlimited performance art make the sense of humor of the film seem cheap, but also extraordinarily joyful.
Three women in a play, the success of "Favorite" not only depends on excellent plays, but also inseparable from the wonderful performances of the three heroines.
Rachel Weisz ("The Immortal Gardener") plays the Duchess of Marlborough in the movie. She not only performed the Duchess' heroic decisiveness, but also interprets the emotional changes before and after falling out of favor in an extremely delicate manner. Her performance before being expelled into exile was sad.
Emma Stone's performance is even more amazing. She just won the Oscar for Best Actress with "City of Philharmonic", and the English accent was unconventionally raised in "Beloved", and her Gongdou expressions are clearly hierarchical and varied and can be used to make facial expressions. Bag. From a seemingly harmless "lady" who just entered the palace to a "favored concubine" who lost her personality in front of the queen, her progressive performance finally reached its climax in the last act of caressing the queen.
And Olivia Coleman’s performance may be more difficult than the first two. To play a seemingly uncontested, but deeply sensual queen, Coleman seems to be manipulated indiscriminately. Come at your fingertips. The performances of the three heroines complement each other and stimulate each other, bringing "Favorite" a unique viewing experience, which is a few grades higher than the seemingly luxurious but empty performance in "Under the Peony" .
In addition, I have to mention the two young male actors in the film. Nicholas Holt ("Single Man", "Skin") is very coquettish in the movie, and he also played a very interesting role, and the performance is also very good. Grow. And Joe Alvin ("Billy Lynn's Intermission") dedicated the best looks in the film. The various loves between him and Sister Stone showed his loyal dog attributes, and he also presented the only one in the film. A heterosexual sex scene is not to be missed.
Since most of the scenes are indoor and the environmental space is limited, Lansmoss used a lot of fisheye lenses. In addition, he also prefers natural light. Many night scenes are shot with only candlelight in Lansmos, which makes the movie full of a strange and mysterious atmosphere. In terms of the rhythm and emotions of the movie, Lansmos has reached the stage, especially after the change of the old and new darlings, the mentality of several people has changed, and Lansmos is just right. The queen's attempt to make up for the emptiness with climax, and the frustration of the new favorite minister who believes that the ascension of the chicken and dog is actually the soul enslaved, Lance Moss grasps so accurately that he can be a master.
After completing the five feature films, Lansmos dared to challenge himself to make a comedy, which in itself was a bold and fresh attempt. Moreover, "Favorite" is very entertaining. From text and video to performance, it is a successful upgrade of Lansmoss. He finally stopped being obsessed with the paranoia and madness of art films, and kindly jumped off the altar and tried to high-five the audience. . Fortunately, this slap was beautiful and loud. Perhaps it opened up a new way for Lance Moss to explore commercial films and opened his heart to communicate with a wide audience.
View more about The Favourite reviews
