Yorgos Lanthimos follows up his Academy Award-winning Poor Things with a return to his earlier work in Kinds of Kindness.

Review by Christian Hernandez

The movie is an anthology, following 3 stories, with its extremely stacked cast playing different characters in each story. The movie is firing on all of Lanthimos’s traits: bizarre characters, strange scenarios, dark humor, all wrapped up with a very nice bow. The end result is a film that is meant to divide and test its audience with how much they can handle Lanthimo’s pen.

The strongest support the film has going is its previously mentioned stacked cast, with Jesse Plemons being the main performer in the first 2 stories, and Emma Stone providing support until becoming the lead for the 3rd story. We also have hilarious performances from Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley and support from Hong Chau and Mamoudou Athie. Plemons gives a career-best performance in the first 2 stories, chewing up every one of his lines and fully embracing the weirdness that comes with the scenarios his characters are put in. Stone time and time again proves why she’s one of our greatest actors, she’s practically a Lanthimos veteran at this point. The way she changes drastically in every story is nothing short of captivating. If you take away anything from this movie, it’s seeing some of our best actors getting a chance to perform unhinged characters. 

The film’s unique stories is what made the movie for me, as I was fully on board with each one from the start. The first story follows a yes-man who is unable to make decisions for himself, finally starting to stand up to his boss, who controls his everyday life. The second follows a police officer whose wife is found alive after going missing on a trip, but he suspects that not everything is as it seems. The third follows 2 cult members trying to find a powerful messiah with powers to bring back the dead. Each one of these is uniquely hilarious, with off-putting humor and uncomfortable moments, that make you question how you would react in the circumstances presented. There were multiple times when the packed theater reacted loudly to the film, either in disgust or in laughter. 

For new comers to Yorgo’s work, especially those unfamiliar with his early work, may find the movie long and uneven, and weird for the sake of being weird. But for regular sickos like myself, the film is far more tame than expected, myself included being a tad disappointed with the absurdity of it all. That being said, there’s still so much enjoyability to be found within the 3 stories. 

Even after sitting with the film for a few days, I still struggled to find what was trying to be said with the film, as it can feel ultimately pointless, but I do feel as if one could take it as a study on human nature, and the lengths we go to please ourselves and others, sometimes going to the extreme to get it done. One thing that can always be found in Yorgos’s films is how human they are, there’s still warmth and empathy to be found, they’re just taken to an extreme and unhinged level. 

Again, the film is meant to be divisive, falling deep into the “you’ll love it or hate it” category of films, which makes it difficult to recommend, even to those who are into surreal works. Fans of The Favourite and Poor Things may find this a bit harder to connect to, but if you give it a chance, I’m confident you’ll find something to enjoy.