Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos Are Already Back With Another One
Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos have gotten their butts up and worked, even though these days it seems like nobody wants to. The actor-director duo are back with their second movie in a year, fresh off four Oscar wins for Poor Things, including a Lead Actress award for Stone. Previously, the two collaborated on Bleat (2022) and The Favourite (2019); the newest one, Kinds of Kindness, is a “triptych fable,” the official summary reads, that follows three characters: a man “without choice” attempting to gain control of his life, a policeman reuniting with his wife who was missing at sea, and a woman searching for someone with a special spiritual ability. Below, find all kinds of Kinds of Kindness info, including how the cast reacted to the script, what happens in the trailer, and when it’s coming out.
Will it be normal?
Most likely not. Lanthimos co-wrote Kinds of Kindness with Efthimis Filippou (The Killing of a Sacred Deer), and all signs suggest that they created an unhinged — or at the very least, incredibly confusing — script. Several cast members shared their initial reactions in a May 6 Vanity Fair piece: “I did not understand what I read — complete disclosure, I did not understand the script,” Hong Chau recalled. Mamoudou Athie also admitted to not understanding it, while Jesse Plemons summed his response up as, “Oh my God. What?” He added that he felt like he needed to read the “abstract and surreal” project’s script “30 more times.”
The film is reportedly broken into three parts, respectively titled “The Death of R.M.F.,” “R.M.F. Is Flying,” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.” Most of the cast play multiple characters across the triptych. “Casting the same few actors in different roles would provide a sense of continuity and unity between the three different stories,” Lanthimos explained to Vanity Fair. “At the same time, I didn’t want the actors to change that much from one role to the next, as that felt like a show-off. We wanted to make slight alterations in the look, energy, and pace of each actor.”
What happens in the trailer?
Emma Stone peels through a nondescript urban landscape in the first trailer. Shots of a dead body getting dragged through a dated hallway and Margaret Qualley slapping Jesse Plemons flicker by. Hunter Schafer performs a ritual in an examination room. Hong Chau licks somebody’s bare back. Willem Dafoe smiles in black-and-white. A person in a wheelchair falls over. Mamoudou Athie is just there. It’s unclear what’s going on. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Stone says in voice-over. Certainly for anyone who didn’t have the patience to wait even a year for another Lanthimos droll comedy.
When is Kinds of Kindness coming out?
It will have its world premiere at Cannes in May. For those of us who cannes’nt make it to the film festival, Kinds of Kindness is due to arrive in theaters on June 21.
This post has been updated.
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