The Favourite · reception & legacy
2018 · Yorgos Lanthimos
How The Favourite has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
No redemption arc needed — it premiered at Venice 2018 to raves (Grand Jury Prize, Volpi Cup for Colman) and rode that wave to 10 Oscar nominations. If anything has shifted, it's that it now reads as the hinge point where Lanthimos went from arthouse cult figure to mainstream awards fixture.
What's debated
The eternal fan debate: was Olivia Colman really the lead and Weisz and Stone supporting, or was that awards-season category gamesmanship — and, among Lanthimos diehards, whether this is him at his most accessible or his best.
Its footprint
Olivia Colman's flustered, raspberry-blowing Oscar speech ('this is genuinely quite stressful') became instantly beloved, and the film's fisheye-lens shots of candlelit corridors and duck racing turned into shorthand for the whole 'unhinged period drama' aesthetic that followed.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd darling and the standard gateway drug into Lanthimos — it sits comfortably on best-of-the-2010s lists as the film that made the costume drama feral again.