It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with Scott Tobias, Keith Phipps, and Genevieve Koski.

In our last episode, we discussed Mark Waters' 2002 teen comedy Mean Girls about a high school newcomer upsetting the social balance at an Illinois

high school and making things hard for the reigning bully in Queen Bee. In this episode,

we look at the same dynamic, but in 1705 England, where a more literal queen, Anne Stewart,

is firmly under the thumb of her companion Sarah, until Sarah's cousin Abigail arrives and starts

usurping her place. This is the first film where

Greek writer director Yorgos Lantamos doesn't share a writing credit on the screenplay,

after a long series of fruitful partnerships with other writers. Lantamose has made his name on

unusually textured movies with deeply disturbing and unpredictable premises, including a family

who isolate and warp their children in dog tooth, a world where single people are forcibly turned into animals in the lobster,

and a scenario where a vengeful young man seems to be using magical powers

to force a terrible decision on a doctor in the killing of a sacred deer.

All of these movies have starkly different looks and feels,

but the favorite feels like even more of a departure.

It's something like a conventional

historical drama, based in the actual relationship between Queen Anne, played by Olivia Coleman,

Sarah Churchill, played by Rachel White's, and Sarah's cousin Abigail Masham, played by Emma Stone.

But Lathamose tells his story with an intense focus on deep, dark spaces, high-contrast female

...