Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has made his name in the US mostly thanks to Oscar winners The Favourite and Poor Things. They are both darkly funny, subversive, with strong stylistic touches, and were fairly successful despite Lanthimos’ total lack of interest in pleasing audiences. As strange as multiplex crowds found them, they were far more accessible than the director’s previous films, such as Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. His latest, the extremely dark comedy anthology Kinds of Kindness, is definitely a return to his more disturbing form.
This time around, Lanthimos doubles down on his willingness to go there, wherever that may be, creating many uncomfortable moments, several awkward laughs and stories full of intrigue, yet empty of true emotional impact.
Is that a negative? I’m not sure. It certainly seems like it was intentional. It’s not as though Lanthimos tried and failed. His characters are deliberately detached from normal human feeling. As a viewer, it is amusing to see the odd situations that are thrown at them and the very flawed ways they react to them. This is about identity, control and desire. What it has to say about those things is up to interpretation. For me, the answer is not much.
Kinds of Kindness works in fits and starts. As the individual stories begin, there is a strange anticipation concerning what is going to happen next. The first two chapters are more effective than the middle one. It also doesn’t feel like they tie together exactly, narratively or thematically. It comes across as three unrelated stories Lanthimos wanted to make, but didn’t have enough material for any of them to be feature length. So, he crammed them all into a single 158-minute movie (without the end credits). There are enough really engaging ideas to keep this interesting, however, there are too many ideas that don’t connect for this to be on the level of Lanthimos’ best.
Each story features roughly the same cast, playing different people. Chapter 1 is about a man (Jesse Plemons) whose every movement is dictated by his boss (Willem Dafoe). Things begin to fall apart when he finally says no. Chapter 2 is about a man (Plemons) whose wife (Emma Stone) is missing. When she returns, he becomes convinced she’s not his wife. The last chapter is about two people (Plemons and Stone) searching for a woman who can bring the dead back to life in order to please the leaders of a bizarre cult (Dafoe and Hong Chau).
In all three of them, Jesse Plemons plays someone not in control of their own life. His boss, his grief/paranoia and the promise of eternal life give his characters something to use as a crutch. Plemons is excellent in each piece, making the different roles stand out from each other. His first performance, as a man with no clue who he is without being instructed, is brilliant. The other two are quite good, as well.
Emma Stone, who has already proven she is capable of handling a Lanthimos production after a Best Supporting Actress nomination for The Favourite and a Best Actress win for Poor Things, is more than game here, especially in the third part where she goes from confident to vulnerable to panicked to hopeful, nailing the biggest character arc in the whole movie. Those two are the leads, though Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau and Mamoudou Athie, each of whom show up in all the sections, provide strong support.
Lanthimos asks a lot of his actors. They have to behave oddly, usually keeping their emotions in a low register, while doing off-putting or downright terrible things. When the writing clicks, and parts of Kinds of Kindness absolutely click, the result is entirely captivating. When it doesn’t, the commitment of everyone involved to tell these stories, that no one else is going to tell, still makes it difficult to look away from the madness.
3¼ out of 5
Cast:
Jesse Plemons as Robert, Daniel, Andrew
Emma Stone as Rita, Liz, Emily
Willem Dafoe as Raymond, George, Omi
Margaret Qualley as Vivian, Martha, Rebecca, Ruth
Hong Chau as Sarah, Sharon, Aka
Mamoudou Athie as Will, Neil, Morgue Nurse
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou
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