Kinds of Kindness review: Yorgos Lanthimos’s trilogy of uncomfortable short stories

There’s a 2003 Coen brothers movie in which George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones are opponents in a nasty divorce battle. It was called Intolerable Cruelty.

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ film is named Kinds of Kindness, but it’s an intentional misnomer. Intolerable Cruelty would have been a more apt descriptor.

The characters in Lanthimos’ surreal triptych of stories are not generous towards one another. Their behaviours are bewildering, frustrating and both sadistic and masochistic. But they are hypnotic. So, maybe we’re the ones who are suckers for punishment.

Kinds of Kindness stars Jesse Plemons (his wonderful performances here won him the best actor gong at Cannes), Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie in multiple roles. Each plays a different character across the three short stories, which are linked, maybe, by an unspeaking character called R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos).

R.M.F. might be the key to understanding Kinds of Kindness or maybe he doesn’t have any significance. There’s a Buffy episode called Restless in which the main characters have a series of dreams and this random character called Cheese Man (“I wear the cheese, it does not wear me”) recurs through all of them but was confirmed to be meaningless.

Sometimes, there isn’t always an explanation when you want there to be.

Does Kinds of Kindness have a deeper significance? Probably. But your interpretation will almost certainly differ from the person in the next seat.

The first story is the story of a man (Plemons) whose every moment in his life is directed by his employer (Dafoe), right down to when and what he will eat if he will have sex with his wife and what colour turtleneck jumper he will wear. When he resists an instruction, he is cut off and finds himself in increasing levels of distress at having to run his own life.

The second is about a man (Plemons) whose wife (Stone), missing during an expedition, returns home alive and seemingly well. Except he’s convinced the woman in his house is not really her. He treats her cruelly.

The third follows a woman, Emily (Stone), who is part of a cult searching for a spiritual figure who can re-awaken the dead. Her mission is regimented by the cult leaders (Dafoe and Chau) who are obsessed with the idea of purity.

Each story has its own exploration of the power dynamics of control and subservience — a play between sadism and masochism. Do we really crave being told what to do? And is that desire so overwhelming they’ll act against their own interests?

There are no answers here, only uncomfortable provocations.

Kinds of Kindness belongs in the more enigmatic and surreal half of Lanthimos’s oeuvre. And like those titles, including Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, he wrote them with Efthimis Filippou.

Lanthimos’ two most recent films, The Favourite and Poor Things, were collaborations with Australian scribe Tony McNamara, and there’s a warmth and accessibility not present in the others.

Kinds of Kindness, like the other works from Lanthimos and Filippou’s partnership, is spikier, intentionally mannered, and far more challenging. But at least when you’re squirming, you know you’re not bored.

Rating: 3.5/5

Kinds of Kindness is in cinemas on Thursday, July 11