Film review: Kinds of Kindness

It was only on Boxing Day that the idiosyncratic Greek director released Poor Things, a deranged fantasy parable about how ineffectual patriarchy is at advancing society. It was a larger-than-life period dramedy, designed to portray a past that exists only in our imagination. Victorian in the most cartoonish sense, it had shortcomings yet was still enjoyable and crowd-friendly in its strange way. Buñuel would’ve had a ball with it and then deconstructed its flimsy politics.

Lanthimos is funny, but I sometimes find his films too patronising to take seriously. It is like he is making movies atop his ivory tower, looking down on the mere mortals who amuse and despise him in equal measure. This cynicism is too overt in The Lobster, my least favourite of his, and in certain scenes in Poor Things. I prefer when his films are apolitical, and instead, his off-beat dark humour set in an uncanny reality shines through. Thankfully, Kinds of Kindness is one of those films. His latest is closest to his first films, Dogtooth or Alps in both style and form.

Kinds of Kindness is a triptych where the main actors play different characters in each story. In the first story, Jesse Plemons plays a man whose life is entirely controlled by his boss (Willem Dafoe), including whether he is allowed to have children with his wife (Hong Chau). When he’s asked to murder a man and refuses, his life starts falling apart. As he tries to return to the good graces of his boss and his lover (Margaret Qualley), he meets another woman (Emma Stone) whose life is also minutely controlled by the same man.

In the second story, Plemmons is a husband dealing with his wife’s (Stone) disappearance. He suspects it is an imposter when she mysteriously returns, even if their friends and family think he is losing his mind.

In the final story, Stone and Plemmons are another couple involved with a weird cult, helmed by Chau and Dafoe, where everyone sleeps together and are obsessed with finding a woman who can bring back the dead (who may or may not be Qualley).

All three stories are vaguely connected by one character, a man who doesn’t have a single line and is only known by his initials, R.M.F. The connection is flimsy and probably not to be taken seriously. It brings every story together in the same universe, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Lanthimos’ way of enjoying this generation of filmgoers, who revel in interconnecting all stories, finding the incongruities between the tales.

 There is a thematic curiosity shared among all three stories. Central to them is always a couple in different stages of separation or, to be more specific, abandonment. Yet, none of the characters are seen as lonely; they take their reality at face value. Stylistically, it’s Lanthimos at his most classically dry and surreal. What ends up the most compelling is how Lanthimos doesn’t dwell in the odd quirks of this world, so why should we? A woman who cuts part of her body for her husband to eat? Sure. A group of people who only drink the tears of their leader? Why not?

It works because Lanthimos’ humour has perfect timing, and he lets his actors play their roles with mysterious and droll sharpness. Especially Plemons, whose three characters swing from charming doofus to serious devout. It’s not only the range that impresses. It is how easily it embodies all three in such a funny and puzzling way.

Kinds of Kindness is a baffling film that never stops being entertaining in its almost three-hour runtime. To someone who needs cinema to be a perfect reconstruction of reality, it offers nothing but a practical joke. To everyone else, it is an adventurous romp that may not say much about our way of life, but it reflects some psychological fears we all share.

Verdict: 4 out of 5

For fans of Lanthimos’ early works or everyone who is sick and tired of the same films over and over again, here’s a new one: a Buñuelian parable about how easy it is to lose our emotional connections. It’s not political (which for Lanthimos is a positive) but very hypnotic.