Yorgos Lanthimos returns to his low-budget, high-concept roots with an uproariously entertaining triple-bill. Here’s our Kinds Of Kindness review.
Searchlight Pictures’ marketing campaign for Kinds Of Kindness loves the number three.
Sauntering down to your local arthouse cinema or one of the UK’s trendier train stations, you might spot the film’s poster: the three-word title, printed three times, in three primary colours. The three leads among a stacked cast are a who’s who of who’s on the up in cinephile circles. Emma Stone; Willem Dafoe; Jesse Plemons.
After the critical and implausibly commercial success of The Favourite and Poor Things, director Yorgos Lanthimos has the sort of vision that can sell whatever mad project he comes up with – to the right crowd. His last film might have out-grossed Madame Web at the box office, but the Greek auteur has cultivated an image money can’t buy. His films are, for want of an, er, cooler word, cool.
That must be how he got away with Kinds Of Kindness, a “triptych fable” of three interconnected stories with each cast member playing a new role in each. If Poor Things felt like Lanthimos developing into his most operatic and fantastical, Kindness takes him closer to his roots, combining the mundane setting and blunt dialogue of The Lobster with the visceral face-slapping that has somehow become his comedy trademark. At 164 minutes, it’s a gamble which would feel self-indulgent if everyone involved wasn’t so good at their jobs.
Instead, it’s damn good fun.
In three loosely connected stories, a man tries to take control of his life from his cult leader-turned boss; a police officer suspects the woman returning from an ill-fated sea voyage isn’t really his wife; and a woman is on the hunt for a person with the power to raise the dead. Each stands almost alone, but for a shared cast and the reoccurring, non-verbal character of RMF (Yorgos Stefanakos).
If the presentation sounds unusual, what’s maybe most surprising about Kinds Of Kindness is how conventionally dramatic each of the stories is. To bang an overused critical drum, each feels like the sort of concept-driven, feature-length film we don’t get in the cinema anymore. Lanthimos has managed to make three witty, crowd-pleasing thrillers and disguised them as a single experimental arthouse piece.
Sure, there’s the odd threesome and a bit of cannibalism in there, and there’s scarcely a frame which doesn’t remind you whose film you’re watching (see the trailer and accompanying dogs-driving-a-car for an example) but nothing the 1990s would have turned its nose up at.
A lot of this is helped by a collection of some of the most interesting actors working in Hollywood. Stone, Dafoe and Plemons are joined by Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie, with a quick cameo from Hunter Schafer thrown in for good measure. The chance to play three people in one film is probably an actor’s dream, and all of them bring their A-game here, from Stone’s triumphant solo dance break to the way Dafoe convincingly rocks a pencil-thin moustache.
Read more: Yorgos Lanthimos’ next film, Bugonia, is out in late 2025
The undisputed star of the show, though, is Jesse Plemons. Finally given a properly meaty leading role after years of stand-out supporting performances in the likes of Breaking Bad, The Power Of The Dog and Civil War, he stands front and centre in two of the three fables. Blending a hangdog earnestness with impeccable comic timing, it’s almost insulting that he hasn’t worked with Lanthimos before.
But if the film’s sheer entertainment value is the headline, that’s not to say there isn’t much going on under the hood, but the three-part construction means plenty of the details feel poised to reveal themselves on multiple watches. In that way, there’s not quite the same feeling of satisfaction leaving Kinds Of Kindness as there is in some of Lanthimos’ best work first time round. But if the director makes the kind of films you like, Kindness is unlikely to disappoint – no matter how many times you say it.
Kinds Of Kindness arrives in UK cinemas on Friday 28th June.
