Yorgos Lanthimos paints a chilling portrait of humanity, where sinister impulses tentacle across every facet of life. Those who have seen Lanthimos’s filmography unravel—from his breakout film Dogtooth through his unsettling, outrageous debut in English, The Lobster, to his latest bewilderment, Poor Things—understand that he threads our darkest caprices into his characters. He is unforgiving, absurd, and undeniably enchanting.
That said, The Favourite and even Poor Things (slightly) deviated from the more subtly disquieting faculties Lanthimos proved capable of in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In Kinds of Kindness, Lanthimos hosts Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer in a misanthropic triptych, where they alternate parts that indulge the director’s unfiltered, uncanny proclivities.
The first short, “The Death of R.M.F.,” unfurls as Eurythmics’s “Sweet Dreams” plays loudly from a blue BMW driven by the reticent R.M.F., played by Yorgos Stefanakos in each installment. Then, shortly after, we cut to Robert (Plemons), who sits in his new Ford Bronco until the same blue BMW passes and he smashes into it. As per any Lanthimos film, we’d be remiss to think it was a simple act of vengeance or self-harm. Instead, it is painfully clear the next day that Robert’s boss, Raymond (Dafoe), controls every decision in his life. But Robert refuses to kill this man in another vehicular manslaughter attempt. The teeth-pulling desperation that follows indoctrinates us to the tone of the film.
Next is “R.M.F. is Flying,” where police officer Daniel mourns his wife, Liz (Stone), who was lost at sea during research. However, when she returns, his burgeoning paranoia makes him believe that his wife is not his wife—a recipe for disaster. The slowest, yet arguably the most fulfilling of the triptych is the last installment, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.” Here, Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Jesse) hunt for a woman who can bring people back to life, tasked by cult leaders Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Chau). The cult, motivated by some fear of contamination, drinks the tears of their leaders for hydration. But we’re focused on Emily; her desire to follow the cult is matched by a simmering, nagging yearning to see her husband (Alwyn) and daughter.
These three fables are violently obscure, each stimulating an almost insatiable desire to put together the disparate pieces of these worlds. It is old-school Lanthimos, with stilted scenes and gelastic dialogue, brutally crashing into his heart-dropping punches. Ultimately, Lanthimos has an ability to employ A-listers outside of the typical Hollywood comfort zone to prepare a novel form of storytelling—one that is somehow refreshing and whimsical in its cynicism. R, 164 min.
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