Kinds of Kindness Review

Celebrated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos follows up on the success of The Favourite and Poor Things with something more experimental with the anthology film Kinds of Kindness.

Kinds of Kindness tells three stories. The first, “The Death of R.M.F.” follows Robert Fletcher (Jesse Plemons), a man who lets his boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe) control his life, but he refuses to crash his car into another when Raymond asks. “R.M.F. is Flying” is about Daniel (Plemons), a police officer whose wife, Liz (Emma Stone) has returned after being missing at sea. But Daniel suspects the woman in his home isn’t really his wife. The third and final story, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” is about Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons), two cultists who are searching for a woman who can resurrect the dead.

Lanthimos has become a well-known director thanks to his work on The Favourite and Poor Things. Both were award contenders and the lead actors in both films, Olivia Colman and Emma Stone won Oscars for their performances. The Favourite was a period drama, and Poor Things was a surreal coming-of-age story. He made sexually charged films about women who took control of their lives in times that oppressed women. Lanthimos reunites with many of his collaborators on Poor Things, but with Kinds of Kindness, he makes something more obtuse.

Before The Favourite and Poor Things, Lanthimos made strange dark comedies and he had an art-house sensibility. The reaction to Kinds of Kindness has been more mixed. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and Plemons won the Best Actor Award. It currently has a solid 7.0 on IMDB but the Rotten Tomatoes showed a contrast because the critics score is 73% but the audience score is 51%. Kinds of Kindness was Lanthimos’ lowest-ranked film since his Greek drama Kinetta.

The acting was one of the strongest aspects of the film. Plemons won the Best Actor at Cannes and he was able to go toe-to-toe with Willem Defoe for having a creepy and menacing presence in the first story. Plemons is an actor who has specialised in that type of role as shown in Game Night, Civil War, and the Black Mirror episode “USS Callister.” Stone has earned the second Oscar in her career working on Poor Things and got a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Favourite. She excelled again in Kinds of Kindness. She made a monologue about an island ruled by dogs into something emotionally powerful and not just a weird joke. It was notable how the lead character in the film shifts. Plemons was the main character in the first story, Plemons and Stone which had an equal amount of screentime in “R.M.F. is Flying” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” was Stone’s story.

Kinds of Kindness had a terrific supporting cast. Joining Stone from Poor Things were Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, and joining them were Hong Chau (The Whale and The Menu), Mamoudou Athie (Elemental), and Joe Alwyn (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk). They were in all three sections and they got to shine in an individual segment. Chau’s biggest role was in the first story where she was Robert’s wife and suffered from some really evil schemes. Athie showed he was more than a whinny character in Elemental by being Daniel’s partner and friend. In “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” Alwyn shows himself to be a chameleon when he played Emily’s ex-husband.

There were individual moments to admire in Kinds of Kindness. The first story felt like it was influenced by American Psycho as it was a story about obsession. The direction of the film had a cold detachment, like his strange Greek film Dogtooth. It was almost Kubrickian.  But the film was also an acquired taste since it had an absurdist approach. Some moments were left open to personal interpretation rather than being seen in a literal sense. As a story “R.M.F. is Flying” was the most disjointed story since it shifted in focus. The black comedy was sprinkled throughout the film and it will divide audiences. In Lanthimos’ previous films, there has been a sense of cruelty, especially in The Favourite and this added to the jet-black colour of Kinds of Kindness.

All three stories shared a cast but thematically there was little connective tissue. “The Death of R.M.F.” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” were stories about obsession and all three stories looked at stories of power dynamics, both within a relationship and an institution. But these are broad themes, nothing too specific. There were also recurring ideas about the importance of dreams with two of the stories showing them to be prophetic and all three show a screwed-up family dynamic.

Newer converts to Lanthimos’ work will be taken aback by Kinds of Kindness due to the cold direction, surrealism, and bad-taste comedy. Some aspects can be enjoyed but it will be a Marmite film.