Hats Off to Yorgos

Hand it to Yorgos Lanthimos. Less than a year after Poor Things arrived as his most accessible film to date, made lots of money, and won four Oscars, the Greek auteur has returned with Kinds of Kindness, another descent into esoteric weirdness.

Not that Poor Things wasn’t weird, with the nudity, Frankenstein-like brain surgeries, and brief sojourn into Parisian prostitution. But it had a particular crowd-pleasing heart that wasn’t there in, say, Dogtooth, The Lobster or The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In the new film, like the older ones, the characters speak in bizarre cadences and say phrases that would make you think they have something wrong with them cognitively.

Kinds of Kindness is extremely funny and also very sad and disturbing. I generally liked it, although even a master like Lanthimos can’t always navigate the jarring tonal shifts. And I acknowledge this will be a tough sell, so the advertising has concentrated almost entirely on the film’s stylish images. Lasting 165 minutes, the film’s an anthology with three unconnected stories. However, the stories feature some common themes and the same eight actors (Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, and Yorgos Stefanakos). The initials “R.M.F.” are also referenced in each story.

The first and best story is centered on Plemons, whose character is married to Chau and trying to extract himself from his dominant boss, played by Dafoe. The second has Plemons and Stone married after her return from a disappearance. The third involves a cult led by Dafoe and its attempts to resurrect the dead.

The second and third stories don’t land as well, and while both have satisfying endings, neither can calibrate the stakes correctly from their darkest moments. The third, though, features the movies’ most vicious parody of the Church of Scientology since Bowfinger gave us Mind Head in 1999.

Throughout, there are lots of doppelgangers, blue cars going fast around corners, and other repeating motifs. It’s the most Lynchian of Lanthimos’ films, and it’s appear Mulholland Drive was a big influence. The score, by returning Poor Things composer Jerskin Fendrix, is a delight. It has a repeated motif of “No! No! No!” A bit involving a character playing the piano leads up to a great punchline, something that pays off brilliantly.

The performances are outstanding. Stone, fresh off her Poor Things Oscar win, has leveraged her stardom into some strange projects, and she and Dafoe remain effective muses for the American phase of Lanthimos’ career. Plemons also does some of his best work. The actor has lost a lot of weight since his last screen appearance, and Kinds of Kindness does the natural thing by having the other characters mention it constantly. And Margaret Qualley, so outstanding earlier this year in Ethan Coen’s Drive Away Dolls, stretches even more, playing four different roles.

The film was shot in New Orleans, and there are subtle clues, although its geography mostly doesn’t matter; I was reminded of having spent most of The Killing of a Sacred Deer’s running time failing to recognize Cincinnati.

Kinds of Kindness will leave many people scratching their heads if they don’t walk out before it’s over. But I liked what it had to offer, and I appreciate that Lanthimos followed his greatest success with such a crazy swing.