I don’t remember exactly when this clickbait title settled in my mind, possibly even before seeing Kinds of Kindness, somehow anticipating the pro and con noise that usually arises around Lanthimos’ films. It’s not that his latest effort doesn’t meet some artistic expectations, nor that it has anything in common with Radu Jude’s film – although connections could be found if someone looked hard enough. And therein lies the problem, the over-interpretation, the need to find the red thread, which works the same for those who (say they) have found it and for the detractors: by digging for hidden meanings, the film as an experience gets buried under ballast.

My experience with this film was under conditions that would horrify cinema purists and contrary to Lanthimos’ festival pedigree and the critical discourse surrounding his cryptic works, the references to ancient tragedy and the dictionary of symbols that cinephiles are expected to bring to his films. I saw it in the director’s homeland, where this Greek Weird Wave began, in a summer cinema overlooking the Acropolis, in 3D (popcorn and nacho noise, occasional cigarette smoke), and in a distributor-cut version: the intermission came right in the middle of a scene of great dramatic tension, an arbitrary “editing” cut that divided Lanthimos’ triptych into two equal acts. Freeze-frame on a close-up of Jesse Plemons (a performance that brought him the Best Actor Award at Cannes this year) so the audience could get a refill.

More precisely, Plemons won the award for two of the three performances he has here – in the last segment, his role is greatly diminished, with Emma Stone taking the lead, similar to the opening segment where Stone herself is a minor presence. Kinds of Kindness consists of three medium-length films united thematically and in terms of cast, and obviously, they are anything but acts of kindness, no surprise for anyone who has seen at least one Lanthimos film (and now gets to see three at once). Here, kindness is offered on a platter, squeezed drop by drop (often of blood) from some willing victims who do their best to give up free will in favour of a higher power (boss, husband, guru) – and in this race for liberation, they demonstrate the very essence of the concept: people are capable of anything.

In the first segment, Plemons plays a corporate executive (Robert) whose entire life is planned in the CEO’s (Willem Dafoe) office, from the colour of the turtleneck sweaters he wears daily to the sex schedule with his wife and the whiskey glass before bed. In exchange for this existence imposed by the millimetre and the pound (eating, losing weight, weight and measurements in general, are constant concerns in the film), Robert is handed on a plate all forms of success stripped of all joy: job, car, wife, house, and all sorts of artefacts of rebellion as art installations, personally chosen by the big boss, all as if to remind him how unfree he is (John McEnroe’s shattered racket, Ayrton Senna’s blood-stained helmet).

Faced with the ultimate horrible directive coming from the top – he must cause a fatal car accident, the upper management does indeed work in mysterious ways – Robert revolts morally and existentially (the accident has very clear specifications, a ritual so to speak, but he’s not ready for this act of faith). What follows are practically the consequences of this refusal, the protagonist’s attempts to negotiate with the higher power, whose goodwill he cannot dispense with (goodwill, kindness, love, all conditional) along with the need for someone else to make the decisions (because in this case it means there is a plan, it’s not all left to chance).

Plemons brings something of the naivety of his Breaking Bad character to this role – capable here too of sudden acts of violence but perfectly explicable transactionally, and executed without a trace of malice, pleasure, or rationalisation of guilt. Which makes his performance all the more unsettling, as his character seems quite rounded psychologically, unlike the aforementioned TV show, where you could easily blame the behaviour on a medical diagnosis (let’s not forget that only the situations Lanthimos puts his characters in are absurd or fantastic, otherwise the characters remain very much grounded in reality – even when the director imposes an acting style outside of realistic conventions). Anyway, I insist so much on Jesse Plemons because for me he was the main unit by which to measure the film as a whole without remainder, the only name in the rotating cast whose three roles have continuity (at least one for which no hermeneutic contortions are necessary).

In the middle segment, the same Plemons plays a cop devastated by the disappearance at sea of ​​his marine biologist wife (Emma Stone). When all hope seemed lost, she is brought home with a few minor injuries, but not quite the same measurements (her shoes no longer fit her), plus some behavioural and appetite issues (she wants to dominate sexually, now loves chocolate cake, and there’s a vague suggestion that she survived by cannibalising her expedition colleagues). Narratively speaking, the segment is a variation on the Rashomon effect, with Lanthimos playing unsubtly (it’s not that he lacks skill, he’s just not interested in subtlety) with the two’s conflicting testimonies, from the cop’s paranoia that the woman next to him is a stranger (some sort of evil clone) to his wife’s bizarre stories about how she survived with the help of some benevolent four-legged friends.

Though lacking subtlety, the balance is perfect in the end – you don’t know whom to believe. The fact that Lanthimos adds a layer of never-clarified domestic violence is both a clue (it’s an echo that runs through all episodes, and power relations are often set on gender lines, with women as collateral victims regardless of the aggressor’s gender) and a perverse play on the viewer’s nerves because you are never given the satisfaction of knowing, and it’s almost too obvious (he’s a cop, after all). By the end, you don’t know who is telling the truth, but it’s clear who holds the knife. Despite the absurdities hanging equally on both sides, the performances are clearly imbalanced: acts of kindness and sacrifice on one side, irrelevant of the intention, the fact that they exist in images makes them real (Emma Stone), malice and outright hatred on the other (frightening what Plemons achieves here, imbuing verbal violence with an almost physicality, if words could kill…).

In the final segment, Plemons and Stone play an apostolic duo (Andrew and Emily) sent on a quest to find a woman with the power to raise the dead by the leaders (Hong Chau and Willem Dafoe) of the sexual-religious cult they belong to. When they run out of holy water blessed with their leaders’ tears, the two partners return to the fold to refill their containers and receive their reward: each cult member can choose between having sex with either her or him. Willem Dafoe is unforgettable, strolling among the congregants like a benevolent satyr, in his red briefs (a sort of Jacques Cousteau about to explore the depths of human sexuality), returning in this final part as a creeper who demands total submission but also gives himself completely to the community (here’s a way to show kindness… as with all relationships in this film, there’s no trace of coercion). In the middle segment, Dafoe plays a minor role, starring as the father of the castaway played by Emma Stone – somehow a confirmation that sometimes it’s all about form (let’s find him a role so they can all play three different characters and get that symmetry), whereas here, in the final segment, it’s more than form, but not much more than style (primarily sartorial – those red briefs! – each character comes with highly individualised outfits).

The final segment is also the most cohesive narratively speaking, which perhaps makes it the least interesting. Plemons’ character is gradually left behind, marginalised by the script, but present enough to stand out in the group photo with the horrible men in the heroine’s life: zealous and petty, Andrew betrays her secrets (she’s still in contact with her daughter) leading to her expulsion from the cult. “Heroine” is a debatable term when it comes to Lanthimos, but if anyone deserves our sympathy in Kinds of Kindness, it’s surely this third iteration of the character played by Emma Stone. In general, her characters in the film fall – or offer themselves – victim to male cowardice. I won’t elaborate further in that direction, since I’ve condemned the overacting, but also because Kinds of Kindness is extremely fragile to spoilers, much of the cinephile satisfaction comes from the (often comical) absurdity that governs and fragments the script into “phases”. One should also pay attention to the “credits” of the three medium-length films; Lanthimos plays with the trending format of post-credits scenes in superhero movies, only here the scene isn’t a bonus but the actual ending put as a bluff after the credits –  of course, the idea that this is the end is also a bluff; just because it’s the last scene chronologically speaking, that doesn’t mean it really is.

Regardless of the directorial intentions, the concept of rotating all these actors in three different roles also works as a macro-scale Kuleshov experiment, achieved with three films instead of three scenes. Each actor plays three characters, but each successive performance does not leave the viewer in an emotional void – hence the fixation on Plemons’ roles, which, more than the others, seem to communicate, pointing towards a less fluid truth of a composite character. Had the order of the segments been reversed, different connotations would have likely emerged.

Again, I’m not saying that’s what the author intended; Lanthimos offers plenty of toys to choose from: some broken, some obvious, some undeniably personal trademarks, some clichés packaged in an auteurist-ironic (?) manner, many of which are disposable (spoilers), or can be used in a unique way (they’re simply to be watched not played with, theoretically dissected). Among the latter, the most interesting are of course the ones that play with you; Lanthimos’s cinema is one of impact and collision, hitting you in the gut. I shy away from saying “shocking”, which seems to be the preferred label for critically (and lazily) interacting with his filmography (and with this, I close the parenthesis opened at the beginning): I don’t understand what all the shock is about; audiences eat popcorn and laugh at Lanthimos’ films, he’s probably the most commercial festival darling out there (both in terms of commercial success and accessibility; there is plenty on the surface for everyone, regardless of what lurks in the depths). Yorgos Lanthimos makes comedies with A-listers in English. A-listers who win Oscars under his direction.

Andrei Sendrea

Film critic and journalist, UNATC graduate. Andrei Sendrea wrote for LiterNet, Gândul, FILM and Film Menu, and worked as an editor on the "Ca-n Filme" TV Show. In his free time, he works on his collection of movie stills, which he organizes into idiosyncratic categories. At Films in Frame, he writes the Watercooler Wednesdays column - the monthly top of TV shows/series.