Kinds of Kindness - Review: Three is Not a Magic Number

 

A little over six months after the release of his previous film and Oscar darling “Poor Things,” writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite,” “The Lobster”) and his now frequent collaborator Emma Stone (“La La Land,” “Poor Things”) have reunited in an anthology film that retains the style of Lanthimos’s previous works, while stretching out the length to almost three hours and plopping it directly into a distinctly simplistic reality compared to his previous works. This is “Kinds of Kindness.” 

The film tells three different tales: the first, “The Death of R.M.F.,” follows Robert, played by Jesse Plemmons (“Game Night,” “The Power of the Dog”), is being manipulated by his boss and lover Raymond, played by Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man 2,” “Poor Things”), into living his life as he sees fit. When he decides to break those orders, his wife Sarah, played by Hong Chau (“The Whale,” “Downsizing”), leaves him, and he finds himself distraught and his life in shambles. The second, “R.M.F. Is Flying,” follows Daniel, played by Plemmons, who finds himself distraught after his wife Liz, played by Stone, returns home after seemingly being lost at sea. As time passes though, he becomes increasingly convinced she is not his actual wife. The third, “"R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” follows Andrew and Emily, played by Plemmons and Stone respectively, a pair of cultists looking for a woman who can bring people back from the dead. After sleeping with someone outside of the cult, Emily is banished by the cult’s leaders Omi, played by Dafoe, and Aka, played by Chau, and begins a quest to find the woman so she may be allowed back into the cult. 

When judging an anthology film, it can be difficult to give a resounding critique on the work as a whole given the sometimes varying number of actors, directors, writers, etc. involved. Luckily, since Lanthimos is the only director and co-wrote the whole thing with Efthimis Filippou (“The Lobster,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”) and each story shares the same cast of actors, it becomes a bit easier. However, make no mistake, these three stories are of varying quality based purely on their own writing. The script as a whole keeps Lanthimos’s typically stinted and deliberate dialogue, but each tale has disparate tones. “Death” feels almost like a classic sex-comedy, but with a modernized sense of thinking, yet somehow manages to be the most blase tale of the whole film. “Flying” meanwhile teeters into uncomfortable and confusing territory, and not in the playful kind that Lanthimos normally works in. “Sandwich” is the only one that really genuinely works, and it's not hard to see an entire film made out of just that one tale. It’s the most fleshed out, most interesting, and has the most for the actors involved to play with. 

Stone is great, but severely limited by the fluctuating quality of the writing she’s working with. Plemmons fairs much better given that he’s the lead in all but one, so his blend of puppy eyes and quiet menace can work its magic. Dafoe seems as though he’s just going through the motions, doing the same “Dafoe thing” he’s been doing for the latter half of his career. Meanwhile, Chau feels flatly underutilized, as do Mamoudou Athie (“Jurassic World Dominion,” “Elemental”) and Margaret Qualley (“Drive Away Dolls,” “Maid”), popping up only occasionally and making little impact when they do, save for Qualley in “Sandwich.” 

Given Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s (“Poor Things,” “The Favourite”) previous works together, it’s alarming how flat all of “Kindness” looks. While there is plenty of great usage of natural lighting and lit cityscapes, especially in “Death,” the film as a whole looks remarkably bland, even taking Lanthimos other works out of the equation. The musical score from Jerskin Fendrix (“Poor Things”) is painfully monotonous, droning on without really adding anything to the material, simply drilling in emotions forced by its musical cues. 

Worse than all of this not working, it all has a painfully forced feeling of self-importance about it that makes it an example of some of the worst aspects of quote-unquote indie films. Especially odd is that, for a director who’s past two works featured sex and sexuality in a very mature way, the usage here seems more for either titillation or to add another layer of “wackiness” to some of the storylines. Weirdly enough, once again the only time this doesn’t really apply is with the third story “Sandwich,” as it simply seems like a more fleshed out tale than the rest. 

“Kinds of Kindness” might be a film about three different kinds of “kindness” being doled out to the people within the tales, but the resulting film is anything but kind to the viewer. While some of the performances manage to elevate the material, and the third tale manages to be better than the entire rest of the film period, it's a blandly shot movie with a script a times dull and others uncomfortable, telling tales of woe that acts as a bizarre follow up to Lanthimos’s previous two films and a bizarre latest chapter in the career of a director with plenty of bizarre chapters. 2/5