‘Kinds of Kindness’ Is Weird, Wild, and Way More Than the Sum of Its F-cked-Up Parts
Those lucky enough to have discovered Yorgos Lanthimos right as he was establishing himself as a world-cinema weirdo — we’d carbon-date the initial who-the-fuck-is-this-guy?! moment as mid-2009, when his breakthrough film Dogtooth was worming its way through the festival circuit — remember what a shock it was to encounter the Greek filmmaker’s work. It was absurd, abstract, capable of spanning the humor gamut from deadpan to super-dark. Not even the gradual inclusion of name-brand actors like Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and Nicole Kidman could dull the bewilderment (try explaining the plot of 2015’s The Lobster to an unsuspecting bystander), or offer a GPS route through his fragmented, fish-eyed looks at human behavior.
Then came The Favourite (2018), the first of his collaborations with screenwriter Tony McNamara, which gave his oddball perspective a period-piece context and, unsurprisingly, a bigger audience. Last year’s Poor Things doubled down on Lanthimos’ appeal to movie stars down for something completely different and awards-season voters who appreciate chaos. They were bizarre, but, y’know, accessibly bizarre. There are moviegoers who only know him for those previous two Oscar-winning satires. They’re about to meet the unfiltered, uncut, old-school Yorgos.
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Kinds of Kindness is less a return to form for Lanthimos — that would suggest he’d somehow fallen off or lost his way — than a return to a form. Or more appropriately, a throwback to a vibe. Designed as a triptych and running close to three hours, this cinematic novella collection feels exactly like something Lanthimos would have made in his pre-“Hollywood’s resident Euro-eccentric” era. Don’t let the starry ensemble fool you. It’s just as head-scratching, humiliation-friendly and downright unsettling as those early reputation-establishing works. Maybe moreso.
Each chapter heading features the initials R.M.F., the handle of a cryptic figure played by Yorgos Stefanakos — though trying to guess how the respective titles reflect or refract the stories themselves may result in blood slowly leaking out of your ears. Each installment features a member of Kinds’ rep company, playing different characters in unrelated (but thematically complementary) tragicomedies of manners; the exception is Hunter Schafer, who only briefly appears in the last third. Each is intermittently funny, frightening, and mondo uncomfortable. All suggest that God, by which we mean the bearish auteur responsible for putting these players through their various trials and tribulations, is somehow a kind deity and one who loves a first-rate sick joke.
Speaking of God: The first story concerns a Job-like figure named Robert (Jesse Plemons) whose faith in his all-knowing father figure is being tested. Actually, Raymond (Willem Dafoe) is less an Old Testament purveyor of wrath or a patron saint; he’s just an extremely rich control freak. The older man has dictated every aspect of Robert’s life for close to a decade, from what his ward can eat to when he can fuck his wife, Sarah (Hong Chau). The reward for doing everything he’s told is a lovely house, a cushy job and the world’s most enviable sports-memorabilia collection.
Which doesn’t explain why Robert waits patiently for someone to start their car and, once the vehicle pulls out into the street, purposefully rams into it. Apparently, this accident was also a request from Raymond. Except it was supposed to be a fatal one. Robert must try again. For once, he refuses to obey Raymond. Bad move.
This first toedip into the tainted waters that Lanthimos would have you dive into is easily the strongest of the bunch, and sets the tone and methodology immediately. Information is withheld from both players and audience members, statuses can switch in a snap, and any opportunity for award social interactions, debasement, moral queasiness, and the kind of screen sex that’s closer to a biological bad trip than a turn-on, will not be passed up. The director’s muse Emma Stone shows up as a late romantic interest for Robert; in Lanthimos World, this means she’ll also have other agendas. The other members of his troupe — Margaret Qualley, Mamodou Athie, and Joe Alwyn — play Raymond’s wife, Sarah’s boss and man who wants to be Ayrton Senna’s bloody helmet. Whether you consider this segment’s ending to be a happy one or not says less about the film and more about you. The stage has been set.
Part Two watches Daniel (Plemons), a policeman who patrols with his best friend Neil (Athie) and is nervously awaiting word on his M.I.A. wife, Liz (Stone). She’s a scientist who’d gone out to sea on a research trip and has been lost for weeks. Eventually, Liz is found and returns home. She’s still up for dinner parties with her husband, Neil and his wife Martha (Qualley), which usually end in videotaped four-way sex. But something seems… off about Liz. Quicker than you can say Capgras syndrome, Neil starts to believe that the woman claiming to be his soulmate is an imposter. So he begins to scheme ways to find out who she really is. We suggest you don’t have anything to eat before this chapter. We do suggest that you make sure to catch its credits sequence, which involves a world run by dogs and Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark.” It’s awesome.
Part Three is a good reminder that all anthology films are only as strong as their weakest links, although the Beta entry in Kinds of Kindness‘ narrative family still slots nicely next to its Alpha and Omega siblings. Willem Dafoe plays a sex-cult guru, because of course he does. (A colleague said that Lanthimos explicitly using a cult as a story subject feels superfluous, because all of his movies feel like they’re about cults in one way or another. We 100 percent co-sign.) Hong Chau is his female counterpart. Stone and Plemons are disciples, who are also looking for a spiritual medium with a specific set of skills. Alwyn is Stone’s ex-husband. Athiu is a coroner. A purple Dodge Challenger nearly steals the entire segment.
Once you land on its final irony, Kinds of Kindness reveals that… well, if you’re looking for some sort of simple revelation from Lanthimos’ sometimes pitiless, occasionally painful and often profoundly hilarious worldview, we wish you well. All three chapters are in conversation with each other, albeit one in a language that identical triplets might teach each other. They’re more than the sum of their collective parts, yet don’t present a cohesive thesis past the notion that people are strange. In the filmmaker’s view, however, they’re also people, and you somehow never feel like you’re watching one of the blithe feel-bad artists that treat characters like bugs wriggling on pins. It’s not cynicism but a chuckling curiosity that fuels this sideways parable, which aligns it with Lanthimos’ past work in the most perfect of ways. You can’t say that it’s a movie for everybody. But it takes all kinds.
This review originally ran as part of our coverage of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
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