Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos made a name for himself with his unique brand of absurdist black comedy, breaking through with indie hits Dogtooth and The Lobster before shifting into slightly more commercial territory and enjoying award-winning successes with The Favourite and Poor Things.
His latest piece sees the auteur return to his deadpan roots, reuniting with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou with whom he collaborated on the earlier work. Structured as an anthology, Kinds of Kindness follows Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone in three separate chapters: first as troubled souls with something unusual in common, then as husband and wife in a strained marriage, and lastly as members of the same supernatural cult.
Like with much of the director’s filmography, the satirical narratives act as allegories for the thematic darkness in his vision. In this outing he harks back to the cold, clinical, sterile style of his 2017 horror The Killing of a Sacred Deer with each protagonist either being manipulated or being the manipulator of their unorthodox situations. While visually Lanthimos’ lens is still as playfully effective, the film’s problems lie in the tiresome writing that too often mistakes moments of gratuity for substance. Every idea feels undercooked, as though previously discarded scripts have been picked up and stitched together with tenuous connective tissue involving a mystery man known as ‘R.M.F.’ – the only role to be reprised in each section.
A certain cadence is required to deliver dialogue in a Lanthimos picture, and this unnatural rhythm has become synonymous with his repertoire and the strange portrayals he draws from his casts. The tight group here are recycled across the explicit triptych of tales and many are repeat offenders; Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Joe Alwyn have past experience in the specificity of his approach to storytelling. Everyone involved, with the addition of the always great Jesse Plemons, give dedicated turns but are put through the wringer of subpar short stories.
Up to his old tricks but playing in a sandbox that feels much less inventive or interesting, this feels like a project too much for Lanthimos in his impressively prolific period – he’s already announced another feature to come out next year. More ‘mean feet’ than ‘no mean feat’ and whether barefoot or in bad sandals, Kinds of Kindness is a misstep from the eccentric director.
Cinema Perspective 