The Favourite (2018)

The Favourite naturally presents sexual relationships between women as part of the power play at the court of Queen Anne. The work neither debates nor problematizes these relationships — it establishes them as a given of the courtly environment, normalizing them through visual and narrative saturation. Tony McNamara's screenplay and Yorgos Lanthimos's direction construct a triangle of manipulation among three women where sexual seduction is an instrument of political ascent. The intimacy scenes are explicit and frequent, presented with the same aesthetic coldness that characterizes Lanthimos's cinema. The narrative strategy is effective: by framing everything within historical satire and unrestrained ambition, the work blurs the moral question about the nature of the relationships depicted. The violence is moderate (hunting gunshots, casual cruelty of idle aristocrats) and the language is adult but not extreme. The performances are notable and the cinematography impeccable, which allows the problematic content to penetrate with greater subtlety. For parents: the R rating is accurate. It is not a film of historical denunciation but rather of aesthetic normalization. The red signal responds both to the explicit sexual content as well as to the ideological normalization of relationships contrary to the natural order.