Film Review: Kinds of Kindness

Following the recent success of The Favourite (2018) and Poor Things (2023), it is perhaps fair to say that Yorgos Lanthimos’ has established himself as a director capable of carrying experimental, arthouse dramas to mainstream success. Yet for all this acclaim, there remains a sense that the director begun to undergo a kind of Wes Andersonification—that, in pursuit of a distinctive aesthetic, he has moved ever further into the realm of self-indulgent parody. His new film, Kinds of Kindness, does not necessarily buck this trend; but it does make a point of it, examining the limitations of this style when it comes to representing the structures of feeling that define our lives.

Unlike Lanthimos previous films, Kinds of Kindness is an anthology piece: a perverse collection of three separate, but interrelated stories, each named after the mysterious ‘RMF’—a mute, minor character, played by the Greek actor Yorgos Stefanakos. The meaning behind these initials is never revealed, though one suspects that the sense of formality and anonymity implied by the abbreviation is very much the point: in a film that probes the extreme lengths its characters are willing to go to prove their devotion to one another, the overall effect is often one of isolation and estrangement. 

These stories are mysterious as they are perverse: in the first, an officer worker goes to extraordinary measures to please his enigmatic boss, before finally deciding to revolt; in the second, a husband grows suspicious of his wife after she returns home from an ill-fated research trip; and, finally, in the third, a husband and wife duo search for a young woman who they believe holds mysterious healing powers. Each story sees the same cast take on different roles and stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alwyn, along with a brief, one-off appearance from Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer. 

Beyond the rotating cast and Lanthimos’ characteristically deadpan style, the presence of certain recurring themes and motifs hints at a fractured unity between these stories: images of broken bones and mutilated or transmuting bodies are scattered throughout—a fact which is reflected in frequent trips to hospital settings. In this, the film courts a sense of the uncanny, one that is perhaps best encapsulated in the image of a shoe that fits one day but not the next. But it avoids ever giving over into outright horror, preferring to pick away at the chaos and violence simmering beneath the self-imposed order of its characters’ lives.

When it comes to the films’ overarching  focus on devotion, two themes are of particular importance: sex and hunger. (Those familiar with the work of Freud might hypothesize that many of the characters’ are perhaps trapped in the oral stage of development). These desires are not so much presented as the hidden drives motivating the characters’ quest for belonging than as a meagre means of achieving an increasingly elusive form of attachment; but rarely, if ever, do they lead to any real form of intimacy. Sex, in particular, often heralds its antithesis: it is embarrassing, clinical, and mediated. By the third chapter, it represents something much more sinister. 

The point, here, is that the film bears all the qualities to proceed with a passionate psychological intensity, but it deliberately denies itself this opportunity—both thematically, in how it approaches to its subjects, but also formally, through the stilted direction of Lanthimos’ style, the emotionally-stunted performances of the cast, and a particularly discordant piano score, from composer Jerskin Fendrix. 

A particularly revealing moment comes midway through the first chapter, when Robert, played by Plemons, encounters Rita (Stone), for the first time. “Have I seen you somewhere before?” he asks. “No,” she says, “I don’t think so.” His question is intended to establish sense of familiarity, but, as the film progresses, we are encouraged to question if these characters have in fact met. Rather than a series of individual stories, it is possible to see the film as recapitulation of the same story, damning the characters to continued their quest for belonging across different realities, or universes. By the end of the film, however, the question we are left with is not whether or not these characters have met, but, such are depths of their isolation, whether it would even matter if they had.