Review: 'Kinds of Kindness' is three twisted tales of human love, with brilliant triple performances by Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe
Like most movies by the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos — like “The Favourite” or “Poor Things” — I don’t know if I can adequately explain how or why his trilogy of stories “Kinds of Kindness” works. I just know that, if you’re like me, it will pervade your dreams and make you think about the world differently.
Lanthimos and his writing partner, Efthimis Filippou, tell three strange tales somewhere in America. In the order we see them, they are briefly synopsized like this:
• An accountant works hard to meet the exacting demands of his boss, until the boss orders him to do one thing he can’t make himself do.
• A cop is happy when his marine biologist wife is rescued after going missing at sea, but when they’re reunited, he senses something is off.
• Two people are searching for a particular person — someone who could fulfill the prophesy of a pair of cult leaders.
The three stories have some elements in common. In each, a character goes to extremes to prove their love to another person. Water is a key element in all three, as is blood. Something is broken that can’t be repaired. And there is a minor character (Yorgos Stefanakos) — identified only as R.M.F., the monogram on his shirt — who is pivotal in all three stories.
The other common factor is the cast, with the major actors playing roles in each of the stories. Jesse Plemons (who won a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for this film) plays the attentive accountant, the worried cop and half of the searching couple. Emma Stone plays a woman the accountant meets, the cop’s wife and the other half of the searching couple. Willem Dafoe plays the accountant’s boss, Stone’s father and one of the cult leaders. Others who appear multiple times are Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Mamoudzou Athie and Joe Alwyn.
By using these actors as an ensemble, shifting roles and attitudes from story to story, Lanthimos deepens the common threads that tie these stories to each other, while also giving the actors room to explore several characters in the context of the same movie. It’s a fascinating high-wire act, and his stars are eager to get up there and risk breaking their necks as they experiment.
The stories are sometimes a bit confounding, and perhaps a bit mean-spirited. Anyone familiar with Lanthimos’ past movies — not just “The Favourite” and my favorite movie of 2023, “Poor Things,” but also “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” — knows that those feelings are routine for him, and it’s in the dark spaces that he works best, shining an uncomfortable light on the people we’d like to think we are and the people we really are.
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‘Kinds of Kindness’
★★★1/2
Opened Friday, June 21, in select cities; opened Friday, June 28, in more cities. Rated R for strong/disturbing violent content, strong sexual content, full nudity and language. Running time: 164 minutes.