Movie Review ~ Kinds of Kindness

By all accounts, 2023 was an excellent year for film, and the end-of-the-year awards reflected that.  That said, when the Oscars finally rolled around in March, I was a bit ready for it all to be over.  In talking about, analyzing, and pundit-ing over the list of nominees for months, the movies I’d championed up front started to feel like underdogs, and the films I was chilly toward in December, I was ice cold on in March.

One of those films that froze me early on was Poor Things, and you may have noticed it was one of the few major contenders I opted not to review at the time.  A beautifully designed nightmare of a film, I found it incredibly problematic when viewed through a lens of consent and even less interesting as experimental entertainment for a league of decent actors.  I’m not going to debate the merits of Emma Stone’s second Best Actress Oscar win (I’m still hung up on the veracity of her first). Still, it can be argued that she and fellow nominee Mark Ruffalo were the only performance highlights in what arguably was poorly acted, if gorgeously produced, highfalutin exploitation.

Barely six months after their second collaboration (the delightfully wicked 2018 film The Favourite was their first), director Yorgos Lanthimos and Stone are back on the big screen in Kinds of Kindness.  While a fourth film (Bugonia, due in 2025) is in the works, this third effort returns Lanthimos to a world that’s less artsy fever dream and more sweaty mystery trip but finds him still languishing in his deranged obsession with sexuality, sacrificing story for the skin.  Equal parts intriguing and infuriating. Kindness is often mindless…but it’s never dull.

Reteaming with his frequent collaborator Efthimis Filippou, Lanthimos (The Killing of a Sacred Deer) tells three separate, (very) loosely interconnected stories, each showcasing the talents of an enviable cast of flexible players, including Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer.   Over 164 minutes, the triptych structure delves into themes of empathy, cruelty, and surprising bonds that can form in the oddest of happenstance.  With a character identified as R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos) being the thread that ties things together, it’s less about finding how the tales are connected but bracing for where Lanthimos will veer the action into cringe-shock territory.

Episodic storytelling can be a tricky beast to tame.  When it’s done well, you get Pulp Fiction, an enduring classic that begs for numerous rewatches.  Leave lackluster threads dangling without coherence or alienate your audience with a lack of variety, and you have a film that wants to be considered alongside Tarantino but isn’t bullish enough to go beyond visual cues to stimulate us into thinking.  That’s where Poor Things went wrong, and Kinds of Kindness nearly crashes and burns in the same arena.  Thankfully, it has a few saving graces that pull it out of its steep nosedive.

Fresh off his Cannes Best Actor win for his work, Plemons (Game Night) has a wild-eyed intensity through the first segment and an unpredictable roiling thunder in his belly through the second.  His backseat role in the third keeps it grounded even as the chapter veers into loopy eccentricity.  Dafoe (The Florida Project) feels like a natural fit with Lanthimos, with the always-game actor willing to go wherever the Greek director asks him to travel.  That’s likely why Stone (Cruella) has also proven to be an optimal muse. Longing to break out of standard roles actresses in her peer group get plunked into, the physicality and chameleon-like properties of the three characters she plays had to be appealing – but as in Poor Things, it feels like it comes at a price actors don’t have to pay.

The remaining cast, including the always MVP Hong Chau (The Menu), offer varying degrees of support but, aside from Qualley (Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood), find little significance in their assigned roles.  I wish Chau or Alwyn (Mary Queen of Scots) had been moved up to the roles Stone and Plemons played in the third chapter just to offset the balance of power and make the movie the ensemble absurdist comedy it is marketing itself as.  It’s almost wrong to credit Schafer (soon to be seen in the spooky Cuckoo) among the top-billed cast as she’s only in one scene and falls prey to Lanthimos’ urge to have his actresses’ doff their top for no actual purpose.

So, let’s address the giant elephant in the room – or rather, the naked actors on screen. Lanthimos seems to have a curious fixation with unconventional sexuality and in disrobing his cast, particularly the female-identifying characters, often for no discernible reason beyond his apparent fascination. It’s as if he’s discovered nudity for the first time and can’t stop poking at it like a child with a new toy.  The effect is more exploitative than essential and more of a personal indulgence than a thoughtfully considered artistic choice.  This didn’t provoke me; I was perplexed.

Each story in Kinds of Kindness starts with a promising hook, and I found myself quickly reeled in by how the oddball narrative progressed.  Lanthimos has a knack for blending dark humor with galling drama. If the movie didn’t get bogged down so often in its eccentricities, it would be a nice cinematic curveball to discover amongst the summer blockbusters.  It’s undoubtedly a step up from the ruddy ick of Poor Things, but Kinds of Kindness leaves a slightly sour aftertaste that no salted movie popcorn can eliminate.