After a couple of bangers director Lanthimos is back to his wicked ways. This anthology of "short" films featuring the same cast rotating through different roles is likely to leave many audiences confused and please those into absurdist comedy. But as each little story resolved itself one question kept popping into my mind, why?
Why did Lanthimos include some odd detail about the characters? Why did they choose this line in this moment? Why are his characters acting one way in one scene and then their motivations appear to take a 180? Why was there a compulsion to tell these stories at all?
Kinds of Kindness is a little wacky, a little dark, a little meandering, and a little confounding. The characters aren't consistently drawn even through individual interludes and there are often weird for the sake of being weird details included that add little to nothing to the story or the characters. For example there is a rape in the middle of the last story that is awkwardly filmed and truly unpleasant yet the film never truly wrestles with is implications or the effect it has on the audience. It has that "I'm an award winning director and I can do what I want" sort of vibe.
But what Kinds of Kindness is not is entertaining. Neither is it impactful. Neither is it emotionally stimulating. It is a bit tedious for sure. But you don't come out of it happy to have endured it.
Kinds of Kindness
Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writers: Efthimis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos
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