Yorgos Lanthimos' "The Favourite," a wicked blast of nasty fun, gleefully dispenses with the usual decorum of the period drama to free its powerhouse trio of actresses — Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz — in a deliciously performed romp through the wigs and corsets of 18th century British aristocracy.
That the acting — and that includes the spectacular supporting player Nicolas Hoult, too, as Tory leader Robert Harley — should be such a feast in Lanthimos' latest is a surprise. His earlier films ("The Lobster," ''The Killing of a Sacred Deer," ''Dogtooth") were intentionally performed in a flat, emotionless manner that seldom rose above an awkward monotone.
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This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film "The Favourite." (Atsushi NishijimaFox Searchlight Films via AP)
This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Emma Stone, left, and Rachel Weisz in a scene from "The Favourite." (Yorgos LanthimosFox Searchlight via AP)
This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Rachel Weisz in a scene from "The Favourite." (Yorgos LanthimosFox Searchlight via AP)
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Rachel Weisz and Olivia Coleman, right, in a scene from the film "The Favourite." (Yorgos LanthimosFox Searchlight Films via AP)
But the brisker "The Favourite" is, to a degree, a departure for Lanthimos who this time is working from a script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara instead of his usual collaborator, Efthimis Filippou. "The Favourite" is no less vicious or pitiless than their previous films, nor does Lanthimos (surprise, surprise) find the customs of early 1700s English royals any less grotesque than the contemporary norms he's so savagely satirized before.
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film "The Favourite." (Atsushi NishijimaFox Searchlight Films via AP)
Yet "The Favourite," a kind of "All About Eve" translated into a triangular power struggle in Queen Anne's court, is indeed a riot, albeit a frigid and disquieting one. And it's not just because Lanthimos favors anachronism over historical accuracy. (Both modern-day slang and dance moves make cameos.) It's the pleasure of seeing three of the finest actresses weave between one another in ever more absurd acts of seduction and betrayal.
In a rickety and crowded carriage, we arrive in Queen Anne's court with Abigail (Stone), a distant relative of the queen who, having been lost by her father in a game of cards, has slipped out of the nobility. She's desperate to restore her standing with a position in the royal household, and after initially being sent to scrub floors, the Duchess of Marlborough, Sarah Churchill (Weisz), takes her on a chambermaid.
Our glimpses of Abigail's so-called "diminished circumstances" (including more than one face-first pushes into the mud) are vivid enough to earn our sympathies and warrant her increasingly cold-blooded tactics for elevation. In one of many such transactional exchanges, Abigail allows a more high-born man into her chamber at night and asks if he's there to rape her or seduce her. "I'm a gentleman," he defensively protests. "Rape then," she matter-of-factly replies.
This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Emma Stone, left, and Rachel Weisz in a scene from "The Favourite." (Yorgos LanthimosFox Searchlight via AP)
Through cunning, blackmail and flattery, Abigail soon has the ear of Queen Anne (Colman), not to mention her bed, a newfound status at odds with the queen's previous confidante and lover, Sarah. Weisz's duchess is using her position with the queen to extend the war with France, and her methods of manipulation are far more aggressively controlling. But they are also more straightforward than Abigail's hollow appeasements. In one scene, Sarah deters Anne from a meeting with the prime minister by holding up a mirror to her make-up-caked face: "You look like a badger." As Abigail emerges as a rival, Sarah, icy and formidable, doesn't shy away from the fight. "I have a thing for the weak," she says.
Through wide-angled and fish-eye lenses Lanthimos tracks the three-sided drama, pulling it toward its most primal expressions. These characters may live in lavish opulence but beneath their powdered faces they are primitive and power hungry. So Lanthimos lingers on a surreal slow-motion duck race down a palace hall and the agony of Anne's gout, scored with an eerie single piano note and a scratchy violin.
Much of "The Favourite" is caustically clever but it's Colman who elevates it to something magnificent. Her Anne is a glorious and sad ruin of a queen, a woman wrecked by time and heartache. (She keeps 18 bunnies, one for each child that didn't live.) Her interest in keeping up with her royal duties has comically disintegrated. In her flowing gowns, she's like a puddle. Weepy and lonely, she's torn between her suitors.
This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Rachel Weisz in a scene from "The Favourite." (Yorgos LanthimosFox Searchlight via AP)
With its spurts of violence, splashes of blood and cynical sexual encounters, "The Favourite" is, oddly enough, about love. In their opposite ways, Sarah and Abigail offer a melancholy dichotomy: Love is either flattery and false, or honest and abusive.
In other words, the only true love is telling someone they look like a badger.
"The Favourite," a Fox Searchlight release, is rated R for strong sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 120 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Rachel Weisz and Olivia Coleman, right, in a scene from the film "The Favourite." (Yorgos LanthimosFox Searchlight Films via AP)
MPAA Definition of PG: Restricted. Children under 17 require accompanying parent or adult guardian
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people killed and over 2,300 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signaled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings. Tehran escalated its threats Saturday, with the Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death-penalty charge. The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who “helped rioters” would face the charge.
“Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country,” the statement read. “Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence.”
U.S. President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters, saying on social media that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”
The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
Saturday marks the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.
State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations. The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honors Iran's 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini as well.
It also repeatedly aired video of purported protesters shooting at security forces with firearms.
“Field reports indicate that peace prevailed in most cities of the country at night,” a state TV anchor reported Saturday morning. “After a number of armed terrorists attacked public places and set fire to people’s private property last night, there was no news of any gathering or chaos in Tehran and most provinces last night.”
That was directly contradicted by an online video verified by The Associated Press that showed demonstrations in northern Tehran's Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.
“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance camera footage of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan. In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.
The Young Journalists' Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran. It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas and another in Gilan, as well as one person slain in Mashhad.
The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, also close to the Guard, claimed authorities detained nearly 200 people belonging to what it described as “operational terrorist teams.” It alleged those arrested had weapons including firearms, grenades and gasoline bombs.
State television also aired footage of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
Iran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls on Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar's state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but they appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.
Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. He urged protesters to carry Iran's old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah to “claim public spaces as your own.”
Pahlavi's support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after the 12-day war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Online video purported to show protests ongoing Saturday night as well.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country's economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran's theocracy.
Airlines have canceled some flights into Iran over the demonstrations. Austrian Airlines said Saturday it had decided to suspend its flights to Iran “as a precautionary measure” through Monday. Turkish Airlines earlier announced the cancellation of 17 flights to three cities in Iran.
Meanwhile, concern is growing that the internet shutdown will allow Iran's security forces to go on a bloody crackdown, as they have in other rounds of demonstrations. Ali Rahmani, the son of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi who is imprisoned in Iran, noted that security forces killed hundreds in a 2019 protest “so we can only fear the worst.”
“They are fighting, and losing their lives, against a dictatorial regime,” Rahmani said.
Associated Press writers Oleg Cetinic in Paris and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.
In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
In this frame grab from video taken by an individual not employed by The Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows a fire as people protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
In this frame grab from video taken by an individual not employed by The Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows people during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
This frame grab from a video released Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, by Iranian state television shows a man holding a device to document burning vehicles during a night of mass protests in Zanjan, Iran. (Iranian state TV via AP)
