What do you even say about a movie like Kinds of Kindness? Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the film is composed of three stories, each involving a handful of characters, each played by the same handful of actors. The stories don’t really connect, except for the character of R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos), a middle-aged man who never speaks. In the first story, R.M.F. must be killed. In the third story, R.M.F. must be resurrected. What happens in between is your best guess.
Born in Athens in 1973, Lanthimos came to prominence at the turn of the century with a handful of fellow filmmakers in a movement known as the “Greek Weird Wave.” Much like other contained movements in postmodern cinema — say Dogme 95 — the Greek Weird Wave was a jolt of energy into world cinema for its unusual stories, eccentric characters, quizzical structures and stilted pacing. If you haven’t seen Lanthimos’ Alps, you really should. It’s about rhythmic gymnastics and professional impersonators. It’s wild.
Naturally, when they label a movement and make you the poster boy, Hollywood comes calling. And after 2011’s Alps, Lanthimos left Greece to make The Lobster and hasn’t looked back. The Lobster and its follow-up, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, are weird, but not nearly as weird as his Greek films. Then, in 2018, Lanthimos made The Favourite with Emma Stone, and a match made in weird heaven was born.
Stone is back for Kindness, first as Rita, a woman under the thumb of the domineering Raymond (Willem Dafoe). Then as Liz, a shipwrecked marine biologist who returns home to find her husband, Daniel (Jesse Plemons), a cold and domineering man. And finally as Emily, a cult follower searching for a woman of a certain age, height and weight, a particular distance from nipple to navel, with an identical twin — preferably deceased — that can raise the dead.
Talk about a mouthful. Kinds of Kindness is like that. Screenwriters Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, who co-wrote two of Lathimos’ Greek movies, Dogtooth and Alps, construct every section and scene with suffocating specificity. Only the players, Stone, Dafoe and Plemmons, alongside Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hong Chau and Margaret Qualley, breathe humanity into it. Everyone is good in Kindness; everyone is game — 100% necessary in a Lanthimos film. There’s also a lot of sex and nudity, which you might expect from the maker of Poor Things.
But Lanthimos might be the least erotic filmmaker of all time. Sex, nakedness or near nakedness seems to be a hallmark he enjoys returning to, though it is not an enjoyment he is interested in sharing with the audience. Instead, he offers the mechanical act of intercourse sans sensuality and the absence of modesty sans desire. Yet, it never feels exploitative or titillating the way many Hollywood movies are. Oh, speaking of sex, in the third story, Emily (Stone) is drugged and raped by her ex-husband (Alwyn). Just thought I should warn you because it’s not brief.
Maybe that’s what a review of Kinds of Kindness is: not an analysis (good luck), a recounting (godspeed) or a recommendation (ha!) but a warning. You may not find narrative coherence here. You may not find a single solitary character to like. You may not understand those characters’ motivations. You may not understand who put certain structures in place and why others follow them blindly. And you may not find any kinds of kindness. You will see a weird dance by Emma Stone — it’s almost a requirement for a Lanthimos movie at this point. Some things you can count on.
ON SCREEN: Kinds of Kindness opens in theaters June 28.
ON SCREEN: Kinds of Kindness opens in theaters June 28.