PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Nicholas Hoult and Joe Alwyn, actors of the film The Favourite.
In a film centered on three women (Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz) in the early 18th century at the Queen Anne’s court, The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos, in competition at the 75th Venice Film Festival, Nicholas Hoult and Joe Alwyn play respectively Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, a young, dressed-up and noble aspiring prime Minister and a courtier Samuel Masham. The actors describe their work on their character and how original and refreshing is Lanthimos’ look on a period film.
The Favourite: Early 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah. Sarah takes Abigail under her wing and Abigail sees a chance at a return to her aristocratic roots. As the politics of war become quite time consuming for Sarah, Abigail steps into the breach to fill in as the Queen’s companion. Their burgeoning friendship gives her a chance to fulfil her ambitions and she will not let woman, man, politics or rabbit stand in her way.
Boy Erased premiered at Telluride Film Festival on September 1 and has so far garnered positive reviews from critics. Although Joe has a small appearance in the film, his acting has been noted by critics, with Gregory Ellwood from The Playlist calling Joe’s performance “fantastic” adding that one of his scenes with Lucas Hedges is the most successful in the movie. Below you can find a summary of what has been said about Boy Erased so far:
The Playlist
Edgerton’s most successful scene centers on Jared’s slightly flirtatious friendship with a college running buddy, Henry (Joe Alwyn, fantastic). Their relationship takes an abrupt turn and Edgerton conveys this in a manner that’s horrifying, and it works because it’s one of the few times the consequences feel shockingly real.
Variety
“Boy Erased” feels like its greatest value will be to parents, particularly those with LGBT children of their own — and Crowe and Kidman have seldom been better in their supporting roles. So often, parents view this news as a reflection on themselves, searching to understand their own failings, or else looking for a way to repair the problem. For Garrard Conley, whose memoir inspired Edgerton’s film, sharing his story was the key to repairing things with his parents. Maybe there’s a lesson in there for us.
We Live Entertainment
There have been quite a few films about gay conversion therapy but Boy Erased is by far the best of all of them.
You can tell when watching Boy Erased that everyone involved felt connected to the story and wanted to make sure that the film adaptation was an honest retelling of what Conley experienced in his own life. The film is emotionally raw and brutally honest but never comes across as heavy-handed. We see Jared as an average teenager who is just trying to understand what’s happening to his body and why he is having these types of feelings.
Boy Erased is a powerful character-driven film that tells an essential story. It is a must-see film and is one of the best movies of 2018.
The Wrap
What to show, what not to show — that was the question. Edgerton navigates the boundary with grace and sensitivity.
Edgerton is an actor’s director, and thus no one in this film is given short shrift. Each has plenty of room to work out what’s happening in their own trajectories.
“Boy Erased” is a good movie and also an important one, one that might save lives if enough young people find their way to it. Likewise, it’s hoped that adults who chose to enter “treatment” on their own will get the message that self-acceptance is what matters. They don’t need to change. It is the world around them that must.
The Hollywood Reporter
Actors-turned-directors do not always have the command of cinematic technique that can be found in the work of auteurs with a different background. But these actor-filmmakers can generally be counted on to encourage and bolster compelling performances, and this is certainly one of the great strengths of Joel Edgerton’s second film as director, Boy Erased. Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and a uniformly splendid supporting cast — including Edgerton himself as a gay conversion therapist — deliver the goods in this heart-rending drama.
Boy Erased aims to influence the debate on gay conversion therapy that is still unresolved in many parts of the country, but it deserves praise not as a polemic but as a richly humanistic, emotionally searing drama that sticks in the memory.
Indiewire
“Boy Erased” uses a similar premise to deflect that burden outward — to put the onus for change and understanding on the misguided people who surround its traumatized young protagonist.
The result is a powerfully conflicted portrait of the relationship between love and hate, a story in which all but the ugliest bigotries can be traced back to a misguided sense of protection. While Edgerton’s fractured approach has a frustrating way of compartmentalizing his characters into their own subplots, making it hard for the movie to convey the full sweep of its emotional journey, “Boy Erased” regards everyone with such raw empathy that even its most difficult moments are fraught with the possibility of forgiveness.
Vanity Fair
Boy Erased is still a respectable effort, serious and sober, about a very real, very bad practice. The film’s heart is firmly in the right place. As is its head: there’s a terrific scene toward the end of the film in which Jared calmly, but with a tremble of emotion in his voice, lays out to his father what a continued relationship between the two of them would have to look like. It’s a smart, emphatic, direct piece of writing. And Hedges and Crowe are terrific together, as two men—one young and newly free with self-discovery, the other old and needing to reconsider toxic, long-held ideals—trying to lurch themselves forward together.
Maybe that is the something new that Boy Erased actually did show me: not another coming-out scene, but something past that. It’s an assertion of strength and principle and self-possession that feels pretty hard won. That’s nice to see. And when that gorgeous Sivan song cues up and the movie glides to a close—just as Jared’s life bittersweetly yawns open—the tears arrive. Any assessment of this film certainly shouldn’t erase that.
Boy Erased is in theatres November 2 2018.
The official trailer for The Favourite has been released and features two new scenes of Joe! The movie will be in select theatres on November 23, 2018. Check out the trailer below:
Last week was the premiere of The Favorite at the Venice Film Festival and Joe was present along with the rest of the cast to pay tribute to the film. Check out the photos in our gallery and Joe’s videos in Venice.
AUGUST 30 | ARRIVING AT THE HOTEL EXCELSIOR IN VENICE, ITALY
AUGUST 30 | ARRIVING AT THE FAVOURITE PRESS CONFERENCE IN VENICE
AUGUST 30 | THE FAVOURITE PHOTOCALL AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
AUGUST 30 | ‘THE FAVOURITE’ PREMIERE AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
AUGUST 30 | ‘THE FAVOURITE’ PRESS CONFERENCE AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
The Favourite was shown yesterday at the Venice Film Festival and received acclaim from critics. Even though the film has three talented actresses, Joe’s work did not go unnoticed and according to one of the critics, a scene in which he dances with Rachel Weisz was one of the best. Check out a summary of what was said about the film:
The Playlist
On three separate occasions during the first press screening of Yorgos Lanthimos‘ “The Favourite” in Venice, the audience spontaneously applauded. These instances were: 1) during a brilliantly anachronistic dance scene in which, to the unfunky strains of period-appropriate harpsichord music, Masham (Joe Alwyn) swings a solemn-faced Lady Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) horizontally around his waist before dipping into a full-on breakdance move down an aisle of cheering courtiers…
From the first explosively satisfying use of the word “cunt” to the final three-way comeuppance, “The Favourite” is a bawdy, bacchanalian beauty that manages to be both filthy-minded and a little heartbreaking, while among its embarrassing riches it boasts not one but three of what will undoubtedly be the best female performances of the year.
This is a story unapologetically about women, and their relationships to power and to one another (though props to Alwyn, Nicholas Hoult, and Mark Gatiss for so gamely sidelining themselves).
Screen Internacional
Don’t be wrong-footed by the delicious scene in which a courtly dance turns into a Baroque parody of various modern dance moves. Yorgos Lanthimos’ entertaining, mischievous, shrewd and archly feminist portrait of intrigue at the court of Queen Anne is not, deep down, a historical makeover exercise in the style of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
It’s more subtle than that: this sparklingly adroit historical romp’s sense of humour derives as much from the Restoration Comedies of its period setting, or the works of contemporary verse and prose satirists like Pope or Swift, as it does from retrofitted references. And the traffic between present and past embedded in that dance scene, or in a facial scar that looks just like the Nike logo, is hardly one way. The Favourite’s world of scheming courtiers who pretend to represent ‘the country’ (whatever that is) while really only serving themselves is clearly intended to resonate with audiences in the age of Brexit and Donald Trump.
Hollywood Reporter
The Favourite, is a juicy power tangle connecting three women in the royal court of early 18th century England, played by a divine trio that bounces off one another with obvious relish.
These two are worthy adversaries, and Stone and Weisz play them to the hilt. Stone at first maintains flickers of innocence and vulnerability beneath her character’s calculation. But Abigail’s ruthlessness becomes apparent as she realizes that Sarah will stand in the way of her regaining her footing as a lady. Hoult’s tricky Harley, outrageously powdered, rouged and primped in the dandyish fashion of the time, and the far more malleable Masham (Joe Alwyn), who’s intoxicated with Abigail at first sight, prove useful accomplices in her plan. A brawling seduction scene in the woods in which Abigail shows Masham that she’s no pushover is a hoot, as is her perfunctory servicing of him when the occasion requires it.
The elegantly structured film is broken up into eight chapters with titles like This Mud Stinks, I Do Fear Confusion and Accidents, What an Outfit and I Dreamt I Stabbed You in the Eye. It ends on a note of sorrowful ambiguity, accompanied by the melancholy strains of a Schubert sonata, in which the two points of the triangle still in place are left in sobering contemplation of their situation.
CineVue
For all that life is vicious, brutish and short in Anne’s England – which, incidentally, became Great Britain for the first time during her reign – Lanthimos – thanks in large part to a marvellous script and three stellar performances – has made his most touching, heartfelt film to date. The Favourite has ribaldry and intelligence to burn, a deliciously entertaining period piece that feels liberated by its period, rather than restrained and invigorates like a glass of wine thrown violently in your face.
IndieWire
“The Favourite” isn’t a zero-sum game. Its palace intrigue is at once seductive and repellant, and there’s a kind of catharsis in seeing it reach its natural conclusion.
The Film Stage
Who of the two may be ill and invalid Queen Anne’s favorite is the question ricocheting around the film’s exhilarating autopsy of an incestuous elite, at once so utterly detached from the kingdom’s troubles and viciously in tune with their animalistic drives. Over eight chapters, Lanthimos captures all out-bonkers displays of royal excesses, from ducks racing around the palace to grand ballroom parties, one of them featuring a breakdance-like routine between Weisz and Abigail’s suitor, Masham (Joe Alwyn), that ranks high among the film’s most memorable scenes.
The Wrap
“The Favourite” is certainly an acting showcase, Lanthimos brings the skewed vision that makes his films simultaneously enthralling and off-putting. The score (which is uncredited, for whatever reason) veers between grandiosity and minimalism but it either draws us in or keeps us at a distance as need be. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan (“The Meyerowitz Stories”) boldly but efficaciously uses swish pans, fish-eye lenses and long tracking shots to accentuate the ridiculously large rooms and corridors enjoyed by the aristocracy. The way Ryan shoots scenes like Weisz and Joe Allwyn’s absurdist gavotte on a checkerboard floor calls to mind the great Sacha Vierny’s work on Peter Greenaway’s films, particularly “The Baby of Mâcon.”
Variety
“The Favourite.” It’s a perfectly cut diamond of a movie — a finely executed, coldly entertaining entry in the genre of savage misanthropic baroque costume drama.
“The Favourite” is a sick-joke morality play in which the message is: Every woman has her reasons.
This clawingly competitive political-erotic triangle is at the center of the movie, with a few key men as supporting scoundrels. Nicholas Hoult, as insinuating as he is tall, makes his presence felt as Harley, the caustic fop who represents the land owners (he’s fighting to cut the taxes that are paying for the war, and is therefore Lady Sarah’s enemy), and Joe Alwyn is Masham, the empty-headed court hunk who Abigail ardently woos — but the second she marries him, we see, on a bitterly hilarious wedding night, what he means to her.
Notice: More reviews will be added before the film’s presentation at Telluride.
The Telluride Film Festival, which runs from August 31 to September 3, announced its programming today, which includes two of Joe’s films, Boy Erased and The Favourite. The Festival is known to be the beginning of award season.
While the oxygen may be thin in Telluride, nestled high in the mountains of Colorado (elevation 8,750 feet), when the 45th edition of the scenic town’s annual film festival kicks off Friday, the air will be thick with Oscar buzz.
Smaller and less flashy than the fall’s other major festivals in Venice, Toronto and New York, Telluride — which pointedly eschews paparazzi and red carpets — has nevertheless found itself thrust into the spotlight in recent years as a launching pad for Oscar glory. The festival has played host to eight of the last nine best picture winners, including “12 Years a Slave,” “Birdman,” “Moonlight” and “The Shape of Water,” which screened there last year alongside fellow eventual best picture nominees “Lady Bird” and “Darkest Hour.”
The 2018 Telluride Film Festival main program lineup:
“Angels Are Made of Light” (d. James Longley, U.S.-Denmark-Norway)
“Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché” (d. Pamela E. Green, U.S.)
“Birds of Passage” (d. Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, Colombia-Denmark-Mexico)
“Border” (d. Ali Abbasi, Sweden)
“Boy Erased” (d. Joel Edgerton, U.S.)
“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (d. Marielle Heller, U.S.)
“Cold War” (d. Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland-France-U.K.)
“Destroyer” (d. Karyn Kusama, U.S.)
“Dogman” (d. Matteo Garrone, Italy-France)
“Dovlatov” (d. Aleksei German, Russia-Poland-Serbia)
“First Man” (d. Damien Chazelle, U.S.)
“Fistful of Dirt” (d. Sebastián Silva, U.S.)
“Free Solo” (d. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, U.S.)
“Ghost Fleet” (d. Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldron, U.S.)
“Girl” (d. Lukas Dhont, Belgium-Netherlands)
“Graves Without a Name” (d. Rithy Panh, France-Cambodia)
“Meeting Gorbachev” (d. Werner Herzog and André Singer, U.K.-U.S.Germany)
“Non Fiction” (d. Olivier Assayas, France)
“Peterloo” (d. Mike Leigh, U.K.)
“Reversing Roe” (d. Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, U.S.)
“Roma” (d. Alfonso Cuarón, U.S.-Mexico)
“Shoplifters” (d. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan)
“The Biggest Little Farm” (d. John and Molly Chester, U.S.)
“The Favourite” (d. Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland-U.K.-U.S.)
“The Front Runner” (d. Jason Reitman, U.S.)
“The Great Buster” (d. Peter Bogdanovich, U.S.)
“The Old Man & The Gun” (d. David Lowery, U.S.)
“The Other Side of the Wind” (d. Orson Welles, U.S.)
“The White Crow” (d. Ralph Fiennes, U.K.)
“They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” (d. Morgan Neville, U.S.)
“Trial By Fire” (d. Ed Zwick, U.S.)
“Watergate – Or, How We Learned to Stop an Out-of-Control President” (d. Charles Ferguson, U.S.)
“White Boy Rick” (d. Yann Demange, U.S.)
