Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I don’t quite know where to start with Kinds of Kindness, which itself is rather on-brand for director ad co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos, who previously brought us Poor Things (2023) and The Favourite (2018) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) and The Lobster (2016). This is a guy with a knack for making movies I find more compelling with each time I watch them, which was especially the case with his last two movies. The key difference with Kinds of Kindness is that I found it plenty compelling, if fucked up in that specifically Lanthimos way, but not in a way I can imagine going out of my way to watch it again.

This is his first feature that is an anthology, which largely explains its 164-minute run time. It features three separate short films, with titles that make less sense as they go on: The Death of R.M.F.; R.M.F. is Flying; R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich. Spoiler alert! No one flies in the second short and no one eats a sandwich in the third. Or maybe they do and I missed it? I learned later that this film features a post-credit sequence, although based on the description it doesn’t sound like I missed much. That’s the thing with Lanthimos’s work, though: it’s easy to miss what you’re missing.

It should be noted, it was several minutes into the first of the film’s three chapters before I even began to get an inkling as to what the hell was going on. To say a Yorgos Lanthimos film isn’t for everybody is to state the obvious, but his more recent films have been a lot more mainstream in their writing and construction, whereas this film harkens back to his earlier work, at times obtuse and frequently fucked up. He also kinds of pulls one over on us from the very beginning, with “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics playing over the opening distributor logos—the kind of thing you typically find at the start of stylized blockbusters, an indicator that you’re about to have the very kind of blast you came for. It then cuts to the titular R.M.F.—the only character who forms any kind of connective thread through all three chapters—walking into an opulent home where a character played by Margaret Qualley opens the door in a sort of miniskirt version of a robe, and invites him in. We hear her have a relatively disjointed conversation over the phone, about R.M.F., but are otherwise given very little in the way of context clues.

Qualley, like all of the other principal actors, appears in all three chapters, in each one playing a different character. With the exception of Yorgos Stefanakos as R.M.F. in all three chapters, the others include Emma Stone as three different characters, along with Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and in much smaller parts, Joe Alwyn. It would take too much time and space to get into a number of characters three times the number of these seven actors; suffice it to say that The Death of R.M.F. involves Plemons as an employee with a cult-like devotion to an employer played by Dafoe; R.M.F. is Flying involves Plemons as a husband deeply suspicious that the wife (Stone) who has returned after being marooned on an island is not really her; and R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich involves a literal cult led by both Dafoe and Chau, in which Plemons and Stone are searching for a miraculous healer.

None of these brief synopses do any one of the short films justice, in which odd details abound. Each of them exist in a universe that is just removed from the real world, one that somehow normalizes things that are deeply disturbing, from consensual murder to self-mutilation to the rape of an unconscious woman. That very last one was something I stumbled over immediately: Lanthimos finding ways to cross boundaries in a disturbing way is a signature move, but I found that one entirely unnecessary, and kept waiting for a narrative turn that somehow justified its inclusion, which never came. It would be misleading to try and argue that the scene is shot in a way that is not gratuitous, because its very inclusion is gratuitous.

The entire film is otherwise compelling, if that counts for anything, in which case your mileage may vary. I would say Kinds of Kindness is strictly for the die-hard Lanthimos fans, of which I am one—even though some arguably misguided choices also make this his weakest feature film in at least a decade. Overall, it feels very much like an exercise in artistic self-expression borne of opportunity Lanthimos eagerly took in the wake of relative commercial and massive critical success. Kinds of Kindness will only go so far on either front, but it still has this uniquely odd element that you just can’t look away from.

For instance, somehow the largely deadpan dialogue delivery actually works for it rather than against it: it feels like rote delivery with directorial intent, as opposed to actually bad acting. This applies mostly to the plethora of supporting players, though: across all three chapters, Plemons, Stone, Dafoe and Chau are all excellent as always. Whether it was them or the actors in smaller parts, though, I found myself wondering how many of them read the script and were eager to be the vessels of this director’s brilliant vision, or if they were just grateful to have gotten some acting work.

I will give Kinds of Kindness a large amount of credit for its deft execution of endings, at least. R.M.F. is Flying ends in a way that is truly wild, something some people will find so ridiculous as to justify completely dismissing it—and I found it hilarious. R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich ends in a way that is deliciously poetic irony, and I got a good belly laugh out of it.

It would seem, indeed, that Kinds of Kindness is intended as a unique brand of black comedy. It’s not that funny, but if you’ve got a truly black sense of humor, it has moments that will hit just right. It depends entirely whether or not you are part of the strictly limited club of people who are on the same wavelength.

*I didn’t even get around the subtle queerness woven throughout the three chapters of this film.*

Overall: B