Fresh off their 4x Oscar-winning hit Poor Things, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone are back with a new black comedy, Kinds of Kindness. At the core of the powerhouse duo’s latest collaboration is an antithesis of its very own title. Kinds of Kindness is a triple-barreled portrait of abandoned morality, where desperation for love is second only to the infliction of cruelty on one another. Notably, this project also sees Lanthimos reunite with his old co-writer, Efthimis Filipou, for their first collaborative screenplay since 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Described as a “triptych fable,” Kinds of Kindness is the kind of striking anthology film that connects through themes and metaphors rather than an intertwining narrative.
Writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos has become a master of amalgamating genres across his career, resulting in his own unique combinations of comedy, drama, and psychological thrills. Of course, it wouldn’t be a true Lanthimos picture if these different blends weren’t all packaged up and held together by his signature taste for absurdism. Kinds of Kindness continues down this path and is more reminiscent of his earlier works, but now on a slightly larger scale. The film’s three segments play out in individual episodic form, with acting credits that roll at the end of each story. While the segments are completely disconnected in a literal sense, with the cast playing different characters each time, all three stories question the human desire to control and be controlled and, more specifically, to love and be loved.
The entire anthology makes a point to highlight the various levels of desperation and codependence that come from the desire for love/control. Each member of the cast gets to play a new character for every segment except for one, R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos). He’s the only person who appears in all three stories under the same guise, with not one word of spoken dialogue either. It’s implied that R.M.F. is his initials, which was also the movie’s original title before being briefly renamed to AND, and then finally to Kinds of Kindness. No matter the extent of his role, the initials R.M.F. remain firmly planted in the titles of each of the film’s three fables, which take the audience from drifting in motel parking lots to dealing with proclaimed holy water in thermal water bottles to even an island ruled by dogs. Kinds of Kindness truly has it all.
The first segment, “The Death of R.M.F,” follows Robert (Jesse Plemons), an architectural businessman whose life is under a complete dictatorship. His boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe), hand writes a flash card for him each day, detailing what he needs to eat and when he must sleep. When Robert finally draws the line after refusing to murder a man who, under Raymond’s influence, has obliged to his own death, Raymond retreats entirely. After initially believing that he could regain control of his own life, Robert finds his life in complete disrepair and fights to win back the approval of his controlling boss.
The second segment, “R.M.F. is Flying,” begins by introducing us to a distressed policeman named Daniel (Jesse Plemons). Daniel has been holding out hope that his wife Liz (Emma Stone), who went missing-at-sea during a scientific excursion, will be found by an ongoing search party. One evening, he gets the call that he’s been waiting for — Liz and one of her colleagues have been found alive and are on their way home via helicopter. As soon as Liz returns home from the hospital, though, she seems like a different person. Daniel begins to hyper-fixate on the new changes he sees in his wife, namely her shoe size and love of chocolate, resulting in dangerous levels of paranoia and skepticism. The couple feed into each other’s delusions (quite literally) until a blood-soaked climax.
The third and final segment in this twisted triptych, “R.M.F Eats a Sandwich,” revolves around a suspicious cult led by the alluring Omi (Willem Dafoe) and Aka (Hong Chau). Two of the cult’s disciples, Emily (Emma Stone) and Andrew (Jesse Plemons), must commute back and forth between the commune’s gated community and the suburb where Emily’s abandoned husband and daughter still reside while on a crucial mission. They are tasked with tracking down someone with the special ability to reanimate the dead, which leads them to twins Ruth and Rebecca (both played by Margaret Qualley).
“R.M.F Eats a Sandwich” is the only story to feature Euphoria star Hunter Schafer, wherein she plays Anna, a potential candidate for the cult’s makeshift messiah. As Schafer herself has previously stated, she’s only in one brief scene despite her character being featured across the film’s marketing campaign. Though it is a notable scene, moviegoers should adjust their expectations in terms of Schafer’s presence. Furthermore, for the title of this segment to make any sense of this already ridiculous plot, audiences will have to stick around until after the credits for a humourous final note to close off this anthology.
All the talent involved, both in front and behind the camera, are operating with grit and a rambunctious commitment to yet another abstract vision from Yorgos Lanthimos. Moreover, Kinds of Kindness is an acting showcase primarily for Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, who have far more screen time than anybody else in the stacked cast ensemble. Plemons delivers in top comedic form as the anguished businessman Robert in the first segment. Meanwhile, Stone crafts the most memorable performance of the whole anthology movie as the naive cultist Emily. It’s another stellar addition to Stone’s vast pool of standout characters, coming right after her second Oscar win for Best Actress earlier this year.
Admittedly, it would have been really fun to see more leveled screen time across the entire cast of Kinds of Kindness. However, it’s clear that as an ensemble, all the players got to really experiment and even step out of their comfort zones in hopping between their various roles. Not a single performance from any actor feels similar to the one that came before. Additionally, with Poor Things arguably surpassing The Favourite and The Lobster as Yorgos Lanthimos’ most widely seen and discussed movie, Kinds of Kindness could become an entry point for newer fans to discover the bleaker and more subtle aspects of the filmmaker’s earlier work, such as 2009’s Dogtooth.
Kinds of Kindness doesn’t feature the towering set designs or magnificent costumes that brought home Oscar gold for Poor Things. Instead, the movie opts for a more naturalistic approach in its visuals, giving full focus on its characters at all times. Even with Lanthimos’ bare visual approach, the anthology film’s three tales remain a zany hoot. Kinds of Kindness takes great pleasure in toeing the line between realism and absurdism, and its script excels at examining human’s natural desires through an unfiltered lens. Now, its considerable two-hour and forty-four-minute runtime is bound to divide some people. But the devious unpredictability seen across all three fables keeps the viewer firmly planted in their seat, grappling with a cocktail of reluctant empathy and unapologetic aversion.
Seeing as both Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons already have their next feature collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos lined up, a sci-fi comedy titled Bugonia, it seems like this director’s hot streak is nowhere near over yet.
Kinds of Kindness premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The film releases in theaters on June 21!
Release Date: June 21, 2024.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
Written by Yorgos Lanthimos & Efthimis Filippou.
Produced by Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, & Kasia Malipan.
Main Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer, Yorgos Stefanakos, & Merah Benoit.
Cinematographer: Robbie Ryan.
Composer: Jerskin Fendrix.
Production Companies: Element Pictures, Film4, & TSG Entertainment.
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures.
Runtime: 165 minutes.
Rated R.
