Screening as part of our Cinemasters: Sandy Powell season celebrating the veteran British costume designer. This season is part of an ongoing collaboration between GFT Cinemasters and feminist collective Invisible Women which aims to highlight contributions made by women in film history and expand definitions of authorship in cinema.
Monochrome colours, heaving corsets and bejewelled stockings - yes please! In The Favourite, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s stark and stylised approach finds a perfect match in Sandy Powell’s superbly imaginative take on 18th century fashion.
Based on an untold true story and set in the court of Queen Anne, this bleakly hilarious tragi-comedy follows the escalating rivalry between long-standing lady-in-waiting Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and ambitious newcomer Abigail Masham (Emma Stone) as they battle for the affections of the increasingly sickly and unstable monarch (an Oscar-winning Olivia Coleman).
For The Favourite, Powell uses historically accurate silhouettes but plays around with modern colours and textures, incorporating contemporary fabrics such as leather and denim. The resulting costumes perfectly capture the spirit of a film which mischievously injects a dose of modernity into the costume drama genre. Lanthimos’s arch tone is reflected in designs which draw out the filmmakers deadpan humour, while Powell’s chessboard colours smartly underscore this tale of machiavellian court intrigue.
Click here to read our Sandy Powell Programme Notes by Invisible Women Co-Founder Rachel Pronger.