“Kinds of Kindness” Review
Emily Stone commands the screen with her bizarre dancing in “Kinds of Kindness”, a black comedy anthology film from Yorgos Lanthimos.
I had a pretty strange experience watching “Kinds of Kindness”. This isn’t unusual for a film by Yorgos Lanthimos because his work always delights me in how crazy, weird and fantastic it can be. But this film felt different than something like “Poor Things”, which netted four Academy Awards, including a Best Actress win for Emily Stone along with Lanthimos getting nominated for Best Director. With “Kinds of Kindness”, I was watching this engaging, haunting, energetic, frightening, disturbing and occasionally funny film for two-and-a-half hours. Then the final shot came and I started to laugh. Hard. I kept laughing and was howling throughout the credits. It was then that I realized why this film is so excellent. If “Poor Things” is the comedic equivalent of one-liners with so many opportunities for the audience to laugh, “Kinds of Kindness” acts like a mad stream of consciousness that is somewhat humorous but that’s building up to a massive punchline that is flooring. It’s a far different turn compared to “The Favourite” or “Poor Things” but it is of equal caliber in how it impressed me.
Telling three stories that are only loosely connected, the film uses the same cast of players to showcase tales that all somehow deal with frightening themes of control, obsession and perfection to the point of absurdity and insanity. In the first tale, a man named Robert (Jesse Plemons), who appears to be controlled by his boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe), finds himself torn when Raymond makes a truly trying request. In the next, Plemons returns as a cop named Daniel whose wife Liz (Emily Stone) miraculously returns following a maritime disaster. But what should be a happy reunion grows into suspicion when Daniel notices some troubling changes in his wife. Finally, Emily and Andrew (Emily Stone and Jesse Plemons) are cult members tracking down a mysterious woman (Margaret Qualley) that their leader Omi (Willem Dafoe) thinks will be vital to the group’s well-being.
With three different stories, “Kinds of Kindness” runs the risk of being disjointed but, like most good anthology films like “Sin City”, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” or “Trick ‘r Treat”, what makes the film so compelling is how each story impacts the other, directly or not. When you do figure out how these three narratives are connected, it’s a pretty funny payoff. Furthermore, the three are thematically linked in a way that I found both alluring and sickening. While “Poor Things” is more of a crowd-pleaser in terms of Lanthimos’ proclivity fo the bizarre, this film has even more risk attached to it with a slower pace and some moments that caused me to churn in my seat. However, it’s that kind of feel that makes “Kinds of Kindness” such an interesting film.
With most of the actors in the film having to work with multiple roles, all of them manage to deliver unique performances for each story. The best way to compare Stone’s performances or Plemons’ performances would be to take a look at the kids of “The Parent Trap” (original or remake, it doesn’t matter). Even though those films have the same actor playing two roles, there was care taken to differentiate between each twin. The same can be said for the characters in “Kinds of Kindness”, they’re doppelgangers that serve the film’s themes of control at the expense of freedom and how twisted manipulation can be.
As usual, Emily Stone is phenomenal and her expanding work with Yorgos Lanthimos showcases her versatility as an actor. Between her performances in Lanthimos’ films and her producing work with her husband Dave McCary (the pair’s production company Fruit Tree have produced works like “Problemista”, “I Saw The TV Glow” and “The Curse”), Stone has this dynamic penchant for the strange that I’m so glad is becoming widely known. Plemons truly steals this film with his dynamic work (particularly in the first two stories) and watching this film makes it abundantly clear why he was awarded the Best Actor wayward at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. With recent hits like “Kinds of Kindness”, “Civil War” and “Killers of the Flower Moon”, it’s hard to believe that this man could deliver so many wildly different performances in that amount of time.
With a merry band of grand actors like Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau and Mamoudou Athie, “Kinds of Kindness” has its work cut out for itself when it comes to compelling performances and it’s perfectly aligned with the talent on the other side of the camera. Despite all of his most recent work being shot by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, Lanthimos continues to differentiate each film with this unique style that he’s never bothered to replicate. A Lanthimos film doesn’t look like his previous ones but there is a connection between them all that is fun to see as a whole, not just with “Kinds of Kindness”. Like other Yorgos films, it’s bizarre and yet feels grounded by what it’s trying to convey. As was the case with “The Lobster” and “Poor Things”, the characters feel so real despite their fantasy setting. Whether it’s a 19th Century Frankenstein-type world or a bright reflection of our current state, this is a filmmaker that continues to immerse the audience in an environment that feels real.
Complete with biting humor, “Kinds of Kindness” easily makes for one of the most unique film experiences I’ve had all year as well as one of the best. With “Poor Things” only having been released six months prior to “Kinds of Kindness”, it’s hard not to feel spoiled by Yorgos Lanthimos but that doesn’t mean I’m complaining. Quite the opposite.
