‘Kinds Of Kindness’: Cannes Review

Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. UK/US, 2024. 164 mins.

There are many mysteries hidden in the triptych that is Kinds Of Kindness, and very few certainties. One is that it’s a screen-wipe. For those wondering where the Yorgos Lanthimos of Dogtooth had disappeared in the five Oscar wins, the Golden Lion and the red carpet soundbites of costume parties Poor Things and The Favourite, why, he’s back. And he’s not feeling too friendly. Reuniting with writer Efthimis Filippou, the spirit king of the Greek Weird Wave has produced a profoundly puzzling, dizzyingly disturbing and dark-hearted set of loosely-connected stories which manage to be discordantly amusing and strangely exhilarating – a cinematic salt-rub.

Visually, and technically, a stripped-back Yorgos Lanthimos film is a pleasure to watch

A lean New Orleans replaces the frilled costuming, elaborate production design and effects work of Poor Things: an anonymous here-and-now which may be in this world – but also may not. This three-part mismatched jigsaw has a heritage in the David Lynch of Twin Peaks (or a colder Quentin Tarantino circa Pulp Fiction) and an attractive cast in Lanthimos’s muse Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Hong Chau.  Its elliptical, savage heart and outsize length may not notch up the numbers of Poor Things or The Favourite for Searchlight when it releases globally on June 26. Yet this twisted narrative of possibly linked souls is one of those generational films which fans will glue themselves to, endlessly teasing out its mysteries and defiant shape-shifting. There’s also something rotten at its core which chimes with the times.

No matter where his restless gaze has roamed, Yorgos Lanthimos films have a distinct odour. Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer reek of it. The Favourite and Poor Things, both adaptations of works without Filippou and both commercially successful award winners, are less overtly pungent. Kinds Of Kindness is sharp and darkly funny at times – an intense writers/actors collaboration. Emma Stone, who Lanthimos met on The Favourite and is a producer on Poor Things, takes centre stage again, and her main co-star is Jesse Plemons, awarded the opportunity in two main roles (and one minor) to fully demonstrate his range. The film is introduced by The Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams – is that a clue?

All three chapters have the name of one particular character in the title, the mysterious RMF, and they star the same actors in different roles. In the first, Plemons is Robert, a man whose life is completely controlled by his creepy boss (and probable lover) Raymond (Dafoe). His job, house and wife (Hong Chau), his very diet and daily routine, are prescribed by Raymond, who gives him gifts including John McEnroe’s broken racket and Ayrton Senna’s fire-singed helmet. When Robert baulks at one of Raymond’s demands, his life will be cut adrift – a key character played by Stone arrives late in the proceedings, while Qualley’s part will grow in significance.

Act 2, in which RMF ’learns to fly’, sees Plemons playing Daniel, a cop whose wife Liz (Stone) has gone missing on some unspecified scientific expedition. He believes she’ll turn up again, yet when she does, his suspicions start to get the better of him. This is the funniest installment, quintessentially Lanthimos/Filippou. Plemons, his partner Neil (Mamoudou Athie) and his partner’s wife – played by Qualley – come for supper to console him. He insists they watch his home movies to remind him of Liz - they turn out to be home-made porn of the four of them having noisy sex. Later there’s a funny visual delivery of a world ruled by dogs (memories and visions are related in black-and-white).

In the final episode, Lanthimos really lets the moorings loose. Things grow ever more complex, nasty and un-real – but you can’t even count on that. It’s the part general audiences will resist the most. There is a very real date rape sequence, in which Joe Alwyn plays a part which will forever banish the actor’s good-guy persona. Emma Stone dances. Margot Qualley sees double. It’s longer, more rangy, weirder. Kinds Of Kindness runs on an internal rhythm that is confusing enough to feel structurally unpredictable, even though a three-act structure could hardly be more classical. Speaking of Greece, there’s a potent male chorus which chips in occasionally, reminding us of whose world we’re in.

Visually, and technically, this stripped-back Yorgos Lanthimos film is a pleasure to watch. Robbie Ryan’s camera seems to relish the limitations and opportunities it offers. This New Orleans is soulless and almost Ballard-like, yet it’s so intriguingly of this world and somewhere apart at the same time. Location work is remarkably astute, from the empty offices and yawning houses of the first chapter, to the cramped home of a policeman, on to parking lots and mansions of the finale. They’re for the most part utilitarian places shot during Covid-era vacancies, while the prolonged post-production process of Poor Things dragged on. They are apt and eerie locations for these strange characters to inhabit.

Plemons is the revelation here, an anchor in a cast telling three different stories of penetrating strangeness. Stone is committed, drawing the viewer in: it seems as if she has to dance, at least for the trailer, in each Lanthimos film, and he cuts it in at the end – it’s a good one. Qualley, so often seen in smaller parts, makes these three add up to something more substantial.

What does it all mean? It’s unlikely audiences will have much of a clue. Humanity, darkness, opportunism, need? The final track leaves no doubt that viewers have been scrabbling about at the bottom of a very dark well for almost three hours. But the surprise is that they will probably come back to peer at it again.