The Favourite Is A Wickedly Fun Take On Traditional Period Pieces Dramas

I am really starting to dig this trend of costume period piece movies like Phantom Thread, Colette and now The Favourite that have their period-era characters talk and act like modern warts-and-all human beings. Though they didn't pioneer this trend (why, the Comedy Central TV show Another Period has been doing this for quite some time now), it is a nice departure from the norm in cinema where the default mode of doing these films is to depict historical time periods in a sacrosanct manner that has people acting as proper as possible. That's not quite the approach taken by The Favourite, which has more in common with a Marx Brothers comedy or even, in terms of ribald dialogue, a period-era version of a raunchy Seth Rogen comedy than it does with your average Stephen Frears film.

Colette Is A Real Page-Turner (Because It's About An Author, Don't You See)

My favorite approach with historical dramas is ones that work around the clock to emphasize the relatable humanity of its lead characters. They may exist in a wholly different time period, but people are still people no matter whether it's 1718 or 2018 so it's nice when these kinds of period piece dramas make an effort to depict their characters as not sacrosanct caricatures of the past but rather flesh and blood people like you and me. Colette takes this approach to tell the true story of Gabrielle Colette (Kiera Knightley), a woman who broke all kinds of boundaries in European society as well as late 19th-century society in general without many even noticing.