Film review: Kinds of Kindness is all kinds of f*cked
It’s a film review so YES there are SPOILERS.
For lovers of depravity, debauchery and dance breaks, may I introduce Kinds of Kindness, the latest mind-bender from Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos. If you weren't one of the thousands who retweeted the viral teaser, which dropped this April, you missed Emma Stone, one of the film's leads and Lanthimos' five-time collaborator, busting a move to COBRAH's sexy pop track BRAND NEW BITCH in a polarizing suit-sandal combo. From this moment on, anticipation for the release was at an all-time high.
Co-written by Efthymis Filippou and Lanthimos, the writing duo behind other fantastical features Killing of a Sacred Deer, Alps, Dogtooth and The Lobster, this has the same signature darkly comic and twisted tonality at its core, with Kinds of Kindness' distinction being its anthological structure. Running for an intense 165 minutes, the film is broken down into 3 individual stories, all featuring the same ensemble cast but seeing the worlds and characters constantly changing. When you put it all together, it's no surprise that it took the pair 7 years to finish the script. So make sure you're hydrated, energized, and chaos-ready when you strap in for this gem.
The first story sets the tone for the common themes throughout the film: dominance and submission, degradation and power. The first installment, The Death of R.M.F, sees Robert (Jesse Plemons) live as his boss Raymond's (Willem Dafoe) pawn. The sexual undercurrent to their dom/sub dynamic sees Raymond control every facet of Robert's life, from when and what he eats to being instructed on how to perform in the bedroom. It's when Raymond asks Robert to drive high-speed into a car with the intent to kill that he finally pushes back and sets the balance off in their relationship. When Robert is faced with losing it all, he meets his replacement, Rita (Emma Stone), which pushes him to extreme lengths to win the affection of his master once again. Inspired by Camus' absurdist play Caligula, it's clear that good and evil exist with no barriers here - a philosophy which seeps into the other stories.
Part two, my least favourite of the triptych, R.M.F is Flying, sees Plemons and Stone play house. Police officer husband (Plemons) is distraught as his marine biologist wife (Stone) has gone MIA with her two colleagues on a research trip at sea. When she returns, he immediately senses something off with her, which is later supported by little tidbits of evidence, such as her shoes no longer fitting and the fact that she played one of his favourite songs when he requested, not of his favourite song. Their tensions turn into brutalistic and bloody one-upmanship, as he requests her to sever her thumb and saute it for his dinner, followed by him asking her to cut out her liver for a nutrious supper. Literally just take an iron supplement but whatever. It ends in a blurry dreamlike sequence, which leaves space to wonder if the wife was indeed a clone or if he was truly in psychosis. I guess we'll never know.
In its conclusion, R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich brings the underlying threads of religious domination and culty leaders to the fore. This time, Plemons and Stone step into the sandals of purple sports car-driving cult members who are brainwashed into believing that the leaders, played by Dafoe and Hong Chau, can make them pure by drinking their tears, having sex with a speedo and eyeliner-wearing Dafoe, and giving up living in society. On the hunt to find their messiah (Margaret Qualley), who is deemed to harness the power to raise the dead with her touch, Stone reconnects with her ex-husband (Joe Alwyn), who, while seemingly a good guy, highlights that it's those surface-level so-called good guys that are much scarier than these brainwashed cult members who seem so off-putting initially. Lock him up and throw away the key!
The cyclical storm that is Kinds of Kindness is one for those who like their jokes served with a side of WTF, with thin threads linking the stories that make you want to sit and assemble the Yorgos Lanthimos puzzle.
Leah Commandeur is an arts and culture writer, with a focus on film, music and contemporary art.