Kinds of Kindness (2024, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Certificate: 18
Running Time: 164 mins
UK Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
UK Release Date: 28 June 2024
WHO’S IN KINDS OF KINDNESS?
Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer, Yorgos Stefanakos, Merah Benoit
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Yorgos Lanthimos (director, writer, producer), Efthimis Filippou (writer), Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe and Kasia Malipan (producers), Jerskin Fendrix (composer), Robbie Ryan (cinematographer), Yorgos Mavropsaridis (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A trio of bizarre and loosely-connected stories…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON KINDS OF KINDNESS?
To fully appreciate Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film Kinds of Kindness, you need to know exactly what kind of Yorgos Lanthimos you’re walking into. This is not the same director who recently brought you Oscar-winners like The Favourite and Poor Things, both of which were penned by Tony McNamara. Rather, this is the one who first garnered attention with outlandish and utterly strange films like Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, all of which – in addition to Kinds of Kindness – Lanthimos also co-wrote with Efthimis Filippou.
If you’ve seen any of those films, and thus experienced their complete disregard for conventionality from their absurdist themes to the dryly deadpan styles of acting, then you will go in and come out of this one not completely shocked by the seemingly radical turn by this otherwise stylish filmmaker. Luckily, I have at least had the pleasure (a phrase used lightly) of seeing both The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer previously, so from my perspective, Kinds of Kindness was a mesmerising return to this type of Lanthimos that – as much as I greatly enjoyed both The Favourite and especially Poor Things – I had come to miss.
Unlike Lanthimos and Filippou’s previous collaborations, Kinds of Kindness is a tryptic anthology, comprised of three separate stories with the same troupe of actors playing different roles in each, and all of them are loosely connected by one throwaway background character: a man only ever identified as “R.M.F.”, played by Yorgos Stefanakos, a personal friend of both writers whose only other acting credit was in Lanthimos’s Poor Things. Given the episodic structure of the movie, this review shall similarly be split into three different sections, each one focusing on a segment and its strengths, weaknesses etc, before ultimately determining how they all come together to work or not work as a whole.
The first story is titled The Death of R.M.F., which concerns corporate lackey Robert (Jesse Plemons) as he lives his life completely under the control of his boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe). The emphasis is on “completely”, for Raymond dictates when Robert must wake up, what he must eat and drink, how much weight to lose or maintain, when he should make love to his wife Sarah (Hong Chau), and so on. In return, Robert is rewarded with a comfortable lifestyle, along with several unique pieces of sports memorabilia such as John McEnroe’s smashed tennis racket. However, when Robert refuses Raymond’s latest request to run down and kill a man – who so happens to be the eponymous R.M.F. – he finds his life come crashing down almost instantly.
This section is conceptually the strongest of the bunch, because Lanthimos and Filippou craft a disarming and often uncomfortable corporate satire that takes firm aim at “yes-men” and the lengths they will go to please their all-powerful superiors. In a way, I kind of wish that this had been the whole film, since there are a lot of fascinating layers to be peeled away, among them the utter unravelling of this main character for having the nerve to say “no” to Dafoe’s utterly controlling demon of a boss. Yet, for its limited runtime, it makes the most of its outlandish premise by throwing in some intriguing curveballs every now and then, such as the introduction of another employee (Emma Stone) who might just be Robert’s replacement. Plus, there’s some great work by Plemons in the central role, with the actor pushing himself to emotional and sometimes physical extremes for some uneasy laughs.
Next, there’s R.M.F. Goes Flying, in which Plemons is now Daniel, a cop whose wife Liz (Stone), a marine biologist, has gone missing at sea. Liz is soon found, presumably having survived on a desert island, but a string of odd behaviour – including a sudden appetite for chocolate cake, her shoes no longer fitting, and a very straightforward manner when it comes to having sex – leads Daniel to suspect that she is an imposter.
The ideas are definitely there, and there are even instances when Lanthimos fully embraces the outlandish absurdity of the situation, including some rather gruesome turns later on where loyalties and even appetites are tested to the extreme. However, this is a plot that doesn’t really seem to go anywhere, ending right at the point where things should be getting a little bit more interesting, and leaving certain aspects a bit too close to the chest. It’s also one where the shock value is in full force, such as a gory encounter with an unruly car passenger (Joe Alwyn, who also showed up in the previous story as a memorabilia collector), and the emotional viewing of a rather pornographic sex tape made between the main couple and their friends (Mamoudou Athie and Margaret Qualley). Admittedly, the suddenness of these moments can generate a good chuckle, but there is something missing from the overall impact, perhaps a solid enough reason for all these shocking moments other than to provoke the audience and possibly even distract from the much thinner execution of this storytelling. At least there are some deeply committed turns by Plemons and especially Stone, who relays a bizarre dream of a world where dogs ruled instead of humans with the straightest of faces.
Finally, we have R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich, wherein Stone and Plemons are now Emily and Andrew respectively. They are members of a bizarre cult led by the charismatic Omi (Dafoe) and his wife Aka (Chau), who instruct their members to only drink the water that they contaminate with their tears, give their bodies sexually to both Omi and Aka, and for some reason never eat fish. Emily and Andrew have been tasked with tracking down a woman who seemingly has the ability to bring people back from the dead, and eventually they close in on a veterinarian named Ruth (Qualley), after being tipped off by her twin sister Rebecca (also Qualley).
After all the uncomfortable and borderline sickening stuff that went on in the previous stories, this was the one that left a sour taste in the mouth. Again, there’s nothing wrong with it from a conceptual standpoint, as again there are ideas at play here that, were this to have been extended to a full-on feature, absolutely could be explored in greater detail. Also, it features another fiery turn by Stone, who between this section and her utterly fearless Oscar-winning turn in Poor Things really does seem to bring out the best of herself in the presence of this director. Unfortunately, it falls flat on its face around the midway point, when a character endures something rather horrific by a supposed trusted individual, and is then, further punished for it almost immediately afterwards. Putting aside the mean-spiritedness of how this particular character and their circumstances are treated, even in the heightened reality where this and the other stories seem to take place, there is no good reason for that moment to even occur, other than to once more provide some of that shock value that didn’t entirely work in the previous sections. It makes whatever follows afterwards, right up to an intentionally anti-climactic final sequence, somewhat distasteful to experience, and not the kind that Lanthimos and Filippou clearly want you to feel.
With all three of these stories, and their inconsistent quality, it’s hard to gauge exactly what the ultimate intent of Kinds of Kindness is. Lanthimos is certainly not one to make his points too obvious, nor is he the type to water down his distinct vision, even in slightly more universal outings like The Favourite and Poor Things. Here, however, the filmmaker probably needed a more direct theme to provide some connective tissue between these three tales, because while they individually carry a lot of promise in their concepts, more often than not they are squandered for moments that seem purely designed to irk the viewer rather than engage them. On top of that, the matter-of-fact delivery of Lanthimos and Filippou’s idiosyncratic dialogue provides viewers with even less of an emotional engagement than they may wish, with the director doubling down on the absurdism that originally made him a star of the Greek Weird Wave movement, which funnily enough also didn’t entirely work for fellow G.W.W. artist Christos Nikou and his US-set feature Fingernails from last year.
Ultimately, Kinds of Kindness is a film where you’re either along for the ride or not. Despite its flaws, as well as the occasional sourness it left me with, I can’t say that I was ever bored during any of these stories, all throughout their combined three-hour runtime. It made me realise that I can just about tolerate this type of Lanthimos, so long as there are interesting ideas being explored, in addition to some bright moments of dark humour as performed by a game ensemble cast, which there very much are in numerous capacities. For better or worse, it’s fascinating to have this Yorgos Lanthimos back.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Kinds of Kindness is a characteristically absurd tryptic anthology from director and co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos, who across three stories displays an unusual appetite for intriguing themes and moments of pure shock value, as delivered by a committed ensemble cast including Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, but often at the expense of saying anything that’s truly meaningful.
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