Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in The Favourite

Best Actress at the 91st Annual Oscars (2018)

Notable Quote:

“I’m tired. It hurts. Everything hurts. Everyone leaves me, and dies.”

Synopsis:

Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Emma Stone) compete for the favour (see what I did there) of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), which mainly consists of delegating away all of her responsibilities and lavishing her with attention, all while avoiding triggering one of her many, many sensitivities. Wait, is Queen Anne just my boss?

The character:

Previously in this column, I’ve quibbled with the Academy’s love of sassy downhome ladies, and of tragic artists, but damn do they have good taste in monsters. Queen Anne is the latest in an amazing canon that includes Nurse Ratched, Martha, and Diana Christensen. Anne is perfect because she’s awful, but also so pitiful – in fact, it’s the fact that she’s such a gaping hole of neediness that makes her horrifying. To put it simply, Anne is a giant baby. She wants love, and attention, and hot chocolate, and doesn’t want to do anything hard, which is really all that any of us want. But being born into royalty, Anne never had to adapt her own desires to the limitations of the real world. She never grew out of tantrums, because she never had to.

If you haven’t seen the movie, Anne might sound like a storming tyrant, and while she certainly can be, that’s generally not her MO. In fact, she’s often meek and easily cowed by the more forceful personalities around her. Sure, sometimes she’ll yell at a servant, but for the most part, she gets her way by being passive-aggressive: forcing down cake because Sarah chides her for eating too much sugar, or pretending to faint so that she doesn’t have to make her parliament unhappy by raising the tax. Because she’s so docile, the people around her tend get a little too forthright in telling her what to do, and that’s always a mistake, because if pushed too far, she’ll snap.

We all know though, that when you get right down into the center of the best monsters, what you find is pain. Queen Anne’s pain is often literal: she’s got gout in her legs that often keeps her from walking, but also seems to have a whole battery of other unspecified ailments, physical and mental. But even more importantly, she’s lost all seventeen of her children: some miscarriages, some stillbirths, and some who only lived a short time. I mean, I would’ve lost it by two, so god bless her for keeping on. And of course, because this movie is weird and deranged and delightful, she now raises seventeen rabbits, one for each child. Heartbreaking and spooky, huh?

The performance:

Can I just say, “yassss Olivia Colman!!” and be finished with this section? No? Okay fine, I’m happy to gush about Olivia Colman. Before I even talk about her emotional range, or her brilliant choices, my favorite thing about Colman is probably the fact that she exudes a level of joy in whatever she does, even in the midst of a tough scene, and it makes her consistently fun to watch. This trait likely emerges from her comedy background, which she uses to full force here. She’s got a very dry British sensibility, in which the humor of a scene often turns on slight gestures and facial expressions.

But of course, this isn’t just a comedic role, and Colman sells the melodrama so well. She really embodies every aspect of the complicated character that is Queen Anne, delivering in both quiet moments (omg, the scene where we slowly zoom in on her face as her eyes brim with tears) and loud (every time she shrieks at someone). It can be genuinely uncomfortable to witness Anne’s raw desperation for love, and that is a credit to Colman’s ability to really lay it all out there.

The movie:

I’ve seen and enjoyed this movie before and when rewatching for this column, I was nervous that it wouldn’t hold up: but nope, it was even better than the first time! The Favourite is a maximalist movie: everything is turned up to eleven. The costumes are over-the-top, there’s a weird fisheye lens effect for a number of scenes, the music blasts, and the characters, of course, are wild. If I could only pick one winner from the film, Olivia Colman is definitely the one, but Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone both play scheming assholes, and deservedly received Best Supporting nominations. The movie is soapy, and off-kilter, and engrossing.

Was the Oscar deserved?

Yes, this is a welcome addition to the winner’s circle.