4 outta 5

Kinds of Kindness is an incredibly strange movie from Yorgos Lanthimos, a director who already trafficked in strange movies (Poor Things, The Lobster), and this is even stranger than usual. It is an anthology film of three separate stories with the same actors playing different characters. There is a running theme about toxic relationships and a whole heap of surrealism and dark comedy. There’s also shocks and weirdly uncomfortable moments with splashes of gore. But as bizarre and dark as it gets, it does remain compelling to watch unfold.

The first story of Kindness involves Robert (Jessie Plemons) who is an employee of Raymond (Willem Dafoe). He tells Robert to engage in a car crash that will kill a man, something that Robert is hesitant about. Raymond has forced himself into every aspect of Robert’s life, even manipulating his relationship with his wife, Sarah (Hong Chau), and preventing them from having children. But Robert’s refusal to do Raymond’s bidding gets him cut off from Raymond, which immediately breaks Robert as he wants love from his boss.

All these stories are twisted, but the first one about Robert trying to stand up for himself is particularly messed up. Plemons shows a guy who is wounded that he can’t do what his boss wants, and whenever he tries to explain he looks pained. When Robert is separated from Raymond, his life immediately starts to unravel, and he engages in a bunch of cheap tricks to get love and approval from strangers. The extent to which Raymond has been controlling Robert’s life is shocking, and he goes along with it only for Raymond’s approval. When it is revealed that they were preventing Sarah from having a child Chau’s reaction is justifiably enraged. This story reaches a very dark conclusion as Robert tries to get Raymond’s love. It’s about someone being in an abusive relationship and when they try to stand up for themselves, it breaks them, and they run back to their abuser to be in their presence again.

The second story is even more absurdist and maybe could be qualified as a sci-fi thriller, as it involves human duplicates. Throwing the audience at the same actors but as completely different characters from the first story adds to the film’s loopy feel. Daniel (Plemons) is a police officer who has had his wife, Liz (Emma Stone) returned to him after missing on a deserted island. This makes Daniel very happy along with their very close friends, Martha (Margaret Qualley) and Neil (Mamoudou Athie). But Daniel starts to notice things that are wrong with Liz, she forgets certain key details of their relationship, and weird things like her shoes are suddenly too small for her feet. Then things get stranger, and Daniel tells Liz to engage in insane things involving cannibalism which she, shockingly, goes along with.

Instead of Plemmons as the sad sack he is in the first story, he comes off as a paranoid loon with a lot of emotional baggage. He is incredibly emotionally attached to his friends Martha and Niel to the point that it becomes very uncomfortable. But his assumptions about Liz being a different person sounds unlikely; if she forgets a song, it probably shouldn’t be important, but she does genuinely act in weird ways. There is a moment when Liz describes what happened to her when she was missing and it is absolutely absurd. Stone’s performance in this story is great as she flops between otherworldly strange but also a woman looking for the approval of her husband. Her final actions are brutal and make the story memorable.

The third story is also about misplaced love although this is about cultists. Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemmons) are two cultists who are searching for a magical woman after Emily has a vision of her. Their cult leaders Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Chau) are obsessed with people being uncontaminated. When Emily meets twins Ruth and Rebecca (Qualley) she thinks they may be the ones she is searching for, but Omi and Aka soon believe that Emily is impure. Now she is desperate to work her way back into the cult and her newfound magic twins may be the answer.

The theme of obsessive love in weirdly different configurations continues in this piece. Emily secretly meets her kid and her kid’s father which is what causes the impurity that gets her kicked out of her cult. She is hanging at the gate of the cult looking pathetic and begging to be let back in, continuing the running theme of people being shut out and needing approval. The whole time she interacts with Andrew and the two cult leaders they seem even weirder than her, with Plemmons Andrew having a perfectly strange vibe. Emily does some nasty stuff in the finale, and her interactions with Qualley have a surrealist tinge. This one probably breaks the most from reality at the end with shocking consequences.

Kinds of Kindness is a twistedly dark film that lands somewhere between sublime nonsense and joy. As an anthology film it can get a little overtly weird, and at two hours and forty minutes it can be a slog in parts and the music can be a bit overbearing and abrasive. But when it clicks its insane vibe makes for a fascinatingly bizarre watch.