REVIEW: Lanthimos Revisits His Roots With ‘Kinds of Kindness’

Fans of Yorgos Lanthimos’ earlier work, such as his Greek films like Dogtooth, will be over the moon to find that the director is returning to his roots in how he celebrates the most macabre and perverse parts of human nature. Co-written by previous collaborator Efthymis Filippou (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and shot on a budget after his career boom with the explosive success of The Favourite and Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness is a return to the director’s classic dark humor and depraved absurdism.

Kinds of Kindness is a sprawling, nearly three-hour anthology split into three unique tales loosely married in theme and ideas but not necessarily the story. However, after viewing them back-to-back and seeing leads Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons step into these different roles, it’s hard not to connect the timelines subconsciously. Outside of the leads Stone and Plemmons, the three fables all recycle actors such as the likes of Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie and an appearance from Hunter Schafer. With the change of haircuts and the swapping of clothes, these individuals put on the hats of a number of peculiar characters seamlessly and repeatedly.

Jesse Plemmons first is Robert, a loyal businessman committed to his professional life and boss, (played by Willem Dafoe) so much so, that he lets his boss dictate his life and schedule. What he eats, how often he showers and when he’s intimate with his wife (Chau) is all predetermined by his overseer, as is every other activity and minute. That is, until his overbearing boss asks him to commit vehicular manslaughter for him — though not to worry, the victim has already consented to the act. Robert is now faced with the dilemma of garnering enough courage to stand up to his puppeteer, but he is unsure if he can function on his own after years of exhaustive management.

Next, Emma Stone returns home to her police officer husband, Daniel (Plemmons), after being shipwrecked out at sea on a deserted island for an extended time. It doesn’t take long for Daniel to become suspicious of her, though, as he is convinced someone has swapped his wife for this impressive imposter. To prove himself right, he begins to ask increasingly horrifying acts of self-harm of his ‘wife’ to prove her commitment and love to him. And lastly, cultists Stone and Plemmons search around desperately for a young woman who has been prophesied to harbor the ability to raise the dead.

It’s almost part of the dark, ironic comedy how the viewer is forced to watch these actors take on roles that cycle them through cruel and unusual situations in different skins, as if symbolizing there’s truly no escape from life’s callousness. Lanthimos does this with intent, excellently directing his cast in his peculiar and infamous deadpan style. He appears to pull from his more vicious and unrelentingly violent days of pre-English films, which helped spur the ‘Greek Weird Wave’ movement, of which he’s always played a significant part. If people doubted his individualism or feared he would lose his bite when he found mainstream success, Lanthimos proves with Kinds of Kindness that this is, in fact, not even close to the case.

Lanthimos’ three disjointed chapters almost come across as folk tales — oral stories that may be fittingly told around fires or large gatherings of the past. Within this trio of perverse, black-comedy myths, the writer-director commentates on the things that make humans innately human. From overt hyper-sexuality, codependency, the desire for love, affection, acceptance, pleasure, and happiness — somehow, it seems, the whole gambit of sticky, bizarre, and convoluted homo sapien qualities are explored.

Though, this isn’t without fault, as the dark tones, tireless violence, and flat despair can become near-suffocating. Specifically when coupled with Jerskin Fendrix’s quirky, blaring score consisting of monotonous vocalizations and harsh, off-key piano notes that quickly become antagonistic. Sure, it can be argued that this is simply typical Lanthimos, a style and MO of an auteur. But even so, it’s not without stumbling slightly into the irksome and tiring territory at points.

Kinds of Kindness is a trip back to Lanthimos’ old days of specific high stylization and liberating off-kilter themes. Lanthimos uses the three-chaptered chronicle to slice open and peel back the goo and sinew to expose the most animalistic and primal vices humans possess, all while under a darkly comedic lens with primary colors, shiny cars, and aesthetic pantsuits abound. The performances are unsurprisingly ingenious, and the film is visually simple yet compelling.

With themes that become more profound with more thought and insight, Lanthimos ultimately uses the film to further his morbid curiosity into his own private studies of humankind. Kinds of Kindness appears to be a reminder that we are all indeed meat creatures on a floating rock, driven by greed, desire, sex, money, and power, to no fault of our own. It’s our nature to want, to yearn, to gain, but it’s how far, as individuals, we are willing to go to achieve these basic needs that is the question. Perhaps with each additional film from the Greek director, we may be inching closer to an eventual answer.

Kinds of Kindness was screened at the Cannes International Film Festival and releases June 28, 2024.