From left, Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe in a scene from Kinds of Kindness.The Associated Press
- Kinds of Kindness
- Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
- Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou
- Starring Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe
- Classification 18A; 165 minutes
- Opens in theatres June 28
Just a few months after fooling moviegoers into thinking that he was the woke second coming of Terry Gilliam with last year’s gonzo Feminism 101 comedy Poor Things, Greece’s favourite bad widdle boy Yorgos Lanthimos is back. But while the speed at which the director’s Kinds of Kindness arrives in theatres is impressive, the actual contents of the new “triptych fable” only reveal all manner of cruel truths.
A truly torturous experience for almost everyone involved – up to and including the starry cast of Lanthimos regulars, who must now surely realize they have been duped by a master cinematic con artist – the film is an aggressively juvenile and tedious dissection of the notion of free will.
Mostly, this involves Lanthimos putting his thumb on the thematic scale, putting a number of thinly drawn characters through Job-like tests in order to discover the arbitrariness of life. But Kinds of Kindness just as much plays as if the filmmaker, alongside his regular co-writer Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer), is simply daring his newfound Poor Things fans to stick around long enough this time around to realize his snide jokes don’t have punchlines so much as they do sucker-punches. As in: There’s one born every minute, and in this case, it’s everyone but Lanthimos.
In the first of the film's three sections, Robert (Plemons) cannot have a meal, drink, bathroom break or sexual encounter with his wife, played by Hong Chau, above, without prior approval from his boss.Atsushi Nishijima/The Associated Press
Split into three sections, each more agonizing than the one before, Kinds of Kindness assembles a vastly overqualified cast of friendly faces – Poor Things’ Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, but also man of the moment Jesse Plemons – to tell loosely connected stories that mistake insipidness for absurdism.
The first entry, “The Death of R.M.F.,” follows a meek corporate stooge named Robert (Plemons) whose every daily move is dictated by his slick boss Raymond (Dafoe). Robert cannot have a meal, drink, bathroom break or sexual encounter with his wife (Hong Chau) unless previously approved by Raymond. After being ordered to participate in a staged car crash that might very well kill someone, Robert walks away from the job, which leads him to encounter an optician (Stone), who has taken his place in Raymond’s game.
Recasting his leads like pieces for the world’s most frustrating jigsaw puzzle, Lanthimos then has Plemons et al reconvene for “R.M.F. is Flying,” which focuses on a cop named Daniel (Plemons) whose wife Liz (Stone) has been rescued after a marine disaster. After a number of minor marital incidents, Daniel becomes convinced that Liz is actually an imposter, even though his father-in-law (Dafoe) insists otherwise. Which leaves Daniel no choice but to enact a series of increasingly grotesque tests to determine Liz’s true identity.
If those two tales sound like Twilight Zone episodes filtered through the vision of an especially vulgar child, then the film’s third and final chapter “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” will make you feel like Lanthimos is trying to pull a Vic Morrow on us all. Following two members of a sex cult (Plemons and Stone) as they search for their saviour – qualifications include resurrecting the dead and having just the right distance between their nipples – the story has prolonged and ungainly detours into rape, sexual humiliation and blunt-force trauma, much of which are played for the kind of sideways laughs that wobble uneasily between yuks and yucks.
The sole connecting thread throughout each story is the presence of a silent bearded man named R.M.F. (an old friend of Lanthimos and Filippou’s), who pops up on the peripheries of the narratives. But the message Lanthimos wants to deliver across all three shorts is as clear as the space the filmmaker believes exists between his audience’s heads: We are a stupid, selfish bunch, deserving of our downfalls. Except, of course, true artists like Lanthimos, who can see through our self-deceptions with the clarity of a god.
The best-worst trick of Kinds of Kindness is that Lanthimos might actually continue to convert acolytes into bowing down before such false idol-hood. In the film’s deliberately ugly aesthetics (there are no buggy fish-eye lens shots here, but plenty of off-kilter angles that will furrow brows and snap necks), aggressively deadpan performances and callous narrative gags, the movie carries such a belligerent energy that it feels designed to welcome the hate. After all, such an approach will filter out those Poor Things bandwagoners who aren’t true believers in the Church of Lanthimos.
Bonus points might be awarded to the director for using the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) right off the top, with the song being the catchiest invitation for reciprocal abuse in pop history. Perhaps next time, though, go with Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart’s Would I Lie to You: Watch me walkin’, Yorgos, walkin’ out the door.