The love lives of extraordinary people
There’s little more satisfying than a truly chewy film that stokes arguments for hours after the curtain has come down. Two cases in point are Ali Abbasi’s brilliantly odd genre-buster
Border, and Yorgos Lanthimos’ typically ultra-stylized and deliciously caustic The Favourite, his most accessible film to date.
Everything you’ve heard about The Favourite is true. For art house lovers and Yorgos Lanthimos fans that means the film is a timely period drama about power and devotion that simultaneously re-envisions history, all through an absurdist, hyper-wide angle lens. For those who can’t fathom the director’s singular aesthetic it could be unbearable.
Border, on the other hand, has oddly flown below the radar since its Cannes debut last year. The allegorical “romance”, co-written by John Ajvide Lindqvist of Let the Right One In fame, blends Nordic folklore with current race and gender issues in a way that must be seen to be fully believed.
Strangely disfigured customs officer Tina (Eva Melander) is respected for an uncanny sense of smell that helps rout out smugglers, but outside of work she’s lonely and isolated, with a mooch of a boyfriend and no friends. When she meets the similarly disfigured Vore (Eero Milonoff), an animal attraction grows between them, and the relationship eventually opens up a new life and a fresh understanding and acceptance of the self for Tina. Naturally, nothing is quite as it seems.
Border asks a lot of the viewers. It asks them to maintain a level of disbelief crucial to accepting the film’s themes and subtle confrontation of our own unspoken gender, sex and racial biases. Anyone keyed in to Norse folklore will likely see Vore’s secret coming a mile away, but everything that comes after its revelation is a breath of fresh air, and a clever spin on otherness, masculinity, femininity, systematic abuse, racism and trauma. Even when Border heads into fantastical realms, the emotional connection that Melander and Milonoff convey buoys the story — and leaves a lasting impression.
Gleefully anachronistic, The Favourite chronicles the ruthless scheming in the early 18th century English court. A fragile, often oblivious, Queen Anne (BAFTA-winner and Oscar-nominee Olivia Colman) swings between advisor and confidant Lady Sarah (BAFTAwinner and Oscar-nominee Rachel Weisz) and her cousin, the disgraced aristocrat Abigail (Oscar-nominee Emma Stone) as war with France rages. That’s really the tip of the narrative iceberg.
Lanthimos and writers Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara have a grand time watching the bawdy and bitter palace intrigue play out among the colorful characters, but they never lose sight of their humanity — good or bad. Lightning bolts of tragedy and regret strike amid the farcical comedy, due in large part to stellar turns by Colman, Weisz and, yes, Stone, such as when Anne explains her 17 rabbits and Sarah expresses her final wish to leave England. Anne may be an unstable ruler, subject to tantrums, but during moments of lucidity she’s also heartbreaking. Similarly, it’s clear when Sarah and Abigail each realize they’ve overstepped their bounds and must now deal with the fallout of their miscalculations.
Both are demanding, dense films. They probably aren’t for everybody, but, arguably, are among the most fulfilling movies of the year.