For a festival that prides itself on remaining outside of the fray, the 56th New York Film Festival kicked off with a royal feast of savagery and scheming.

Yorgos Lanthimos' vicious 18th-century tragicomedy "The Favourite," starring Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman, premiered on Friday as the opening night selection of Lincoln Center's prestigious annual summit of world cinema. The film, about two bitter rivals in Queen Anne's court, upends the normal decorum of the period costume drama with menacing quips, flippant profanity, and sexual degradation.

It is, as you might imagine, a lot of fun. Lanthimos, the Greek provocateur of "The Lobster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," delights in diving into a gleefully twisted tale about two women – Stone's dishonored maid Abigail and Weisz's Lady Sarah – jockeying for the British Queen's ear (and the Queen's bed). To cast it, Lanthimos resorted to some unconventional audition techniques.

"He had me pant like I was giving birth throughout the lines," said Stone, laughing, in a press conference Friday. "I think he just does this for everyone."

But more than in any recent year, the New York Film Festival has chosen not to participate in the kind of palace intrigue that generally governs the festival world. The New York Film Festival, which will run through October 14, has always eschewed many of the distractions that can engulf other festivals for a more curated slate, soberly chosen, that reflects much of the year's best, often culling substantially from more high-wattage festivals like Cannes, Venice, Telluride, and Toronto.

Yet this year, neither of New York's three gala screenings – "The Favourite," Alfonso Cuaron's autobiographical tribute "Roma" (the centerpiece) and Julian Schnabel's Vincent van Gogh drama "At Eternity's Gate" (the closing film) – are that much sought-after. They all first bowed at one of the fall's other festivals.

That's unusual for New York's prized gala slots where in years past films like "The Social Network," "Life of Pi" and "Steve Jobs" have been first seen by audiences. But rather than chose films that might not have been up to snuff, Kent Jones, festival director, Dennis Lim, programming director, and Florence Almozini, associate director of programming, have opted to value quality over world premiere bragging rights.

And this year's lineup boasts a lot of quality. The 30 films playing in New York's main slate include new works from the Coen brothers ("The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Barry Jenkins (the James Baldwin adaptation "If Beale Street Could Talk") Claire Denis ("High Life," with Robert Pattinson), Olivier Assayas ("Non-Fiction," with Juliette Binoche), Hirokazu Kore-eda (the Palme d'Or-winner "Shoplifters"), Jia Zhangke ("Ash is the Purest White"), Jafar Panahi ("Three Faces") and Pawel Pawlikowski ("Cold War").

(Top Photo: Actors Emma Stone (L) and Joe Alwyn attend the premiere of "The Favourite" on the opening night of the 56th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center in New York, September 28, 2018.)