Kinds Of Kindness Review: Not The Best Yorgos Lanthimos Movie, But The Most Yorgos Lanthimos Movie

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is keenly interested in the systems that bind us. Most of his films are about how humans — we whimsical, self-serious egotists — require strictures and societal bindings to function, even if those bindings are absurd, harmful, or wholly invented by power-mad weirdos. The only thing that can free us from our self-imposed hairshirts, usually, is our sexual agency. That was certainly true of Lanthimos' 2023 Oscar darling "Poor Things," in which a woman with the brain of an infant grew into a self-actualized bisexual sex worker, once she was freed of the influence of boorish men who would seek to control her body. 

Additionally, in the 2009 film "Dogtooth," Lanthimos told the story of three adult children being raised by a father who, for what can only be a sociological experiment, kept them imprisoned in their home, teaching them a surreal, alternate vocabulary. In "The Lobster," the rituals of love and courtship were reduced to a literal checklist of common interests. Anyone who wasn't part of a socially sanctioned couple was magically turned into an animal. In "The Favourite," two women vie for the sexual affection of the flustered Queen Anne, pitting their respective sexual agencies against one another. 

All Lanthimos characters are subservient to a controlling person or, more insidiously, an unspoken cultural hierarchy they're willing to hurt themselves to protect. Lanthimos explores his ethos with a dark pixie's wink, infusing his films with the deeply sardonic humor of an embittered trickster god. Watching his films is like being tickled by a piece of dangling pig tripe.

Lanthimos' newest film, "Kinds of Kindness" offers a 165-minute triple-hit of hierarchical anxiety, offering a triptych of stories connected by their common cast. It may not be the best Lanthimos, but it's certainly the most Lanthimos.

The three segments are presented with no introductory or bookend material. Lanthimos himself is our Cryptkeeper.

In the first story, "The Death of R.M.F.," Jesse Plemons plays Robert, the employee of an eerie business tycoon named Raymond (Willem Dafoe). Raymond has given Robert a house, a car, and pays him handsomely. Raymond, we later learn, orchestrated the romantic meeting between Robert and his wife (Hong Chau). Raymond dictates every detail of Robert's life, down to the mix of his morning juice, his weight, and the book he reads at night ("Anna Karenina"). Robert, however, recently failed Raymond when he botched a fatal car wreck that Raymond requested. While no one can relate to the mad, mad system Robert has been roped into, everyone may relate to being a disappointment to one's boss ... and begging to be let back into their good graces. 

In the second story, "R.M.F. is Flying," Plemons plays a Louisiana cop whose wife (Emma Stone) went missing on a deserted island after a plane crash. When she is rescued, her behavior is ... altered. Her shoes don't fit. She's too sexually forward (although the couple regularly has orgies with their best friends, played by Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie). Plemons begins to suspect that his wife was replaced by a doppelgänger. He then snaps and begins making ... odd requests of her. 

In the third story, "R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich," Plemons and Stone play members of a strange purity-obsessed cult, run by Chau and Dafoe. They travel with their own water, and speak — in a Strangelove-like echo — of the purity of their bodily fluids. They have taken to the road searching for a young woman who, if she fits a particular set of personal circumstances, might have unknown healing superpowers. 

"Death" and "Sandwich" are explicitly about cults, and how charismatic rulers leverage certain kinds of language to bring others under their control. In "Death," it's the language of the office block, the bourgeois living room, and the furniture catalog. Your life must match a specific narrative, or you will be a disappointment. "Sandwich" makes the themes obvious by using actual cult members repeating Jim Jones-like philosophies and free-love mantras that are as old as time; in real life, creepy, health-obsessed sex cults aren't as outré or weird as Lanthimos seems to think they are; just read up on the Oneida Community sometime.

"Flying," meanwhile, while arch, is the most explicable of the three, telling a tale of schizophrenia. It takes a while for the story to manifest, but it does so in a shocking way; Plemons engages in a police shooting that ends ... unusually. "Flying" seems like a rather straightforward madness drama until an unseen twist ending. 

Indeed, all three segments sport similar twists that offer the mad characters a twisted sort of validation. Sometimes, "Kindness" argues, madness provides the correct song to sing. In a dark way, there's a note of hope in the carnival of casual cruelty. The characters will not emerge unscathed, but they may find rewards in being tortured by fate. 

And tortured they are. Just the like protagonists in a Coen Bros. movie, Lanthimos' characters are marked for doom as soon as we meet them. In Coen Bros. movies, however, people have the wherewithal and self-awareness to engage in self-pity. Lanthimos lets his characters remain fecklessly pathetic. There is no overcoming one's conditioning. The mad systems we built will ever remain our prisons.

Each individual segment in "Kinds of Kindness" is a fascinating maze unto itself, slowly unveiling their respective surreal systems with Salome's vicious seductiveness. The exploration is half the fun. The most exhilarating moments come when you become gobsmacked at the realization that, yes, those are the rules of this universe. Yes, this is a weirdo business arrangement. Yes, he does appear to be mad. Yes, this cult is 100% serious about purity of essence. 

As a whole, however, "Kinds of Kindness" doesn't always satisfyingly cohere. The segments link thematically, but don't flow into or out of each other in an organic way; the film feels like three episodes of an anthology series, populated by very talented repertory players. It never drags, but there is far too much of it for its own good. Like Lanthimos, the cast of "Poor Things," and his co-screenwriter Efthimis Filippou ("Dogtooth," "The Lobster," "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), spent an afternoon brainstorming fun story ideas they then shot over the weekend.

Luckily, when working with amazing talented and devoted performers like Dafoe, Chau, Plemons, Qualley, Stone, and Athie (not to mention a cameo from Hunter Schaefer), an otherwise lackadaisical structure feels solid enough. Even while lost in a mystery — or, more likely, startled by the violence — one will always be on solid ground. 

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

"Kinds of Kindness" opens in theaters on June 21, 2024.