The Favourite

The Favourite is about Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) who rules Britain from 1702 to 1714. The film portrays her as bit of a sad person plagued by ill health, a recluse and a part-time lesbian. She’s possibly sad because of her 17 failed pregnancies for which she has to show only 17 rabbits representing each one that ended in either miscarriage, stillbirth or a very short life. This I suppose might be enough to make you seek solace in your own sex. 

Or possibly sad because of the political turmoil she has to precede over, not that she takes much interest in ruling the country and leaves most of the bickering\blackmailing\murdering etc to her Prime Minister Sidney Godolphin (James Smith) and the opposition leader Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult).

She does opt to raise taxes to pay for the war with France on the advice of her ‘lady in waiting’ Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), Duchess of Marlborough, the wife of the general who commands the army. Mostly because Sarah is not only in possession of the royal ear but also the royal bed.

However Sarah’s sexual obligations to Anne are curtailed when Sarah’s cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), arrives on the scene as a chambermaid intent on shagging her way up the social ladder. Abigail was once an aristocrat herself until her father allegedly gambled her (and lost) in a poker game. I hasten to add there is no historical record to support this nor for that matter Anne’s rabbits. Although with the whole film supposedly being a riotous comedy sticking to the facts is probably not strictly necessary.

It doesn’t take Abigail long at all to oust Sarah from her role in delivering special services to the Queen while at the same time, conveniently for him, Harley is trying to get Abigail to persuade the Queen to stop financing the war. He strikes a deal with Abigail by offering her marriage, which will restore her status, to his friend Masham (Joe Alwyn) who Harley refers to as ‘c*** struck’ with Abigail.

Abigail though is not so struck with Masham and she consummates their marriage by nonchalantly jerking off her new husband with a look of disgust on her face before wiping her hand on the bedclothes.

Quite where Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, is throughout all this we’re not sure.

All in all it’s an excellent period romp and all great fun, although obviously not good clean fun. The film boasts three excellent female leads which may stop people pointing out there are not enough female lead roles but probably not. In what is looking to be a very thin year for films it will no doubt pick up an award or three as well as educating everyone with new and varied uses of the ‘c’ word.

Locke

The whole ninety minutes of Locke takes places inside his car and Tom Hardy (as Locke) is the only actor you see on screen. The supporting actors and actresses appear only as voices on the other end of his mobile phone. Thankfully on a hands-free kit or else it may have been a bit hard to follow, not to mention dangerous. 

I was a little sceptical about the whole idea and almost skipped this one in protest at such dullness. Good job I didn’t.

Ivan Locke is a construction manager about to oversee a massive foundation laying exercise for a huge new building. On the eve of this he climbs into his car and makes a phone call to tell his boss Gareth (Ben Daniels) that he isn’t going to be there to supervise. That isn’t going to go down well.

Then he phones his wife Katrina (Ruth Wilson) to tell her he isn’t coming home to her tonight and to tell his sons he won’t be there to watch the football with them. Katrina has even put the club shirt on for him and has the sausages under the grill. Then he tells her why, another woman is about to give birth to his child. That's going to go down even less well.

Then he phones Bethan (Olivia Colman). A woman he describes as plain and old with whom he once briefly worked and had a one night stand with, mostly out of sympathy. She is now giving birth to his child with very poor timing.

He has decided to abandon everything to attend the birth even though he barely knows her and certainly doesn’t love her because the child is his responsibility. 

While he makes the drive down the motorway from Birmingham to London, we are party to the calls he makes and receives. All the while his personal and professional life collapses around him.

After confessing his infidelity, his wife bans him from their home. Meanwhile his company bosses in Chicago fire him, yet his sense of duty means he takes every step to ensure the pour of the concrete that will make the foundations will succeed, talking his stand-in Donal (Andrew Scott), a man who likes a drink or two, through what he needs to do.

Locke is a man with an unrelenting belief that he doing the right thing.

I though it was excellent. A refreshingly low budget, captivating voyeur type film and something quite different. Tom Hardy is terrific but he has to be, no one else was going to carry the film if he didn’t. Simply because there is no one else.