Movie review|In his new film, master of absurd cinema, Yorgos Lanthimos returns to his original style, but more controlled than before.
Drama
Kinds of Kindness. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. 164 min. K16.
★★★★
It is actually surprising that of all contemporary European directors, it is precisely the Greek one Yorgos Lanthimos has risen to the international top.
His films have always been really strange and difficult to approach, downright repulsive.
The Favourites and especially the latest one of Poor Things with that, Lanthimos rose strongly to the Oscar caste, which guarantees complete freedom to continue along the same lines and whenever.
Latest Kinds of Kindness has been born of Poor Things side by side, and in it the director returns to his original style.
It means the cooperation of a countryman, a screenwriter Efthimis Filippou with. It was with him that Lanhtimos created his cinematic world in movies, among other things Canine tooth (2009), in an English interpersonal dystopia The Lobster (2015) and in the thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017).
To put it nicely, the films made with Filippou have divided opinions. So does it Kinds of Kindness i.e. in that sense too, Lanthimos descends from the hills of fame to the ground for a change.
I myself belong to the obvious minority. I’d rather take my Lanthimos this way than as pompous, crowd-pleasing, seemingly unconventional muka-epokas.
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The director continues with totally strange lines. The most profound clip of the film is shown at the beginning.
Kinds of Kindness is a triptych, a set of three separate films.
They are linked by the letter combination RMF – which according to Lanthimos means nothing at all – and the same actors, led by the familiar Lanthimos ensemble Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe.
Dafoe plays heavy supporting roles, and Stone’s actual co-star in all three is Jesse Plemonswhose career is on the rise. From Kinds of Kindness he was awarded at Cannes in the spring, deservedly so.
Common themes can be unearthed. How do people exercise power over each other? What is freedom, what can you do with it? What about the so-called kindness?
Lanthimos has asked these questions before.
Power theme is emphasized especially in the first part, which is anyway the most profound film of the trio.
In it, Plemons plays the petit-bourgeois sad black Robert, who has agreed to be the henchman of his boss Raymond, played by Willem Dafoe. Raymond has used all possible power over her, including sexual power.
Emma Stone, who appeared in the movie Poor Things, is acting again under the direction of Yorgos Lantimos.
However, Robert’s limit is met when Raymond demands that his subjects kill a human. Robert refuses, Raymond puts a stop to it, but Robert still can’t stand being freed and strives to win back his boss’s favor.
Emma Stone enters the picture as a random helper, but Robert can’t even trust her.
Another part is, in this context, a rather conventional but raunchy horror thriller that ends with cannibalism and paranoia. Stone and Plemons play a married couple.
In the third part, there is no longer any slack, but Lanthimos knows how to tie the parts together as if it were a logically progressing story. The kinship with David Lynch seems most obvious here.
Kinds of Kindness continues on totally strange lines, but this time even more controlled. You have to follow the stories, even though there is almost nothing to understand in them, nothing to live with or get attached to. Lanthimos leaves the viewer alone to wonder.
The same distancing is emphasized by nondescript outdoor shooting locations and sterile interiors, as well as inconsistent image sizes and cropping. Kinds of Kindness is a film to be stared at rather than watched.
Still, the circle closes nicely. At the end, we return to the man whose initials are RMF.
Screenplay by Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou. Starring Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Yorgos Stefanakos.
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