"Kinds Of Kindness" -- Movie Review

 

This week at Lincoln Center, I attended an advance screening of the new comedy-drama, “Kinds Of Kindness”, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Jesse Plemons. 

Synopsis

Three vignettes about the strange lives of different characters as they struggle to make sense of their life. 

Story

"The Death of R.M.F":  In order to display loyalty to his boss Raymond (Dafoe), Robert (Plemons) is ordered to crash his car into that of another man, RMF, who is also employed by Raymond.  Upon carrying out the order, Raymond takes Robert to task because RMF was not killed in this planned “accident”.  Raymond informs Robert that in order to keep his job, he must crash his car into RMF again – but this time, to do it at a higher speed so that RMF dies.  Robert is taken aback by this and after a considerable amount of soul-searching, he informs Raymond that he cannot do what has been asked of him.  Raymond then hires Rita (Stone) to do the job for him. 

"R.M.F. is Flying":  Daniel (Plemons) is a police officer who seems to be going off the deep end – and with good reason.  His wife Liz (Stone) went on a trip and never returned.  He refuses to believe that she is dead and continues to hold out hope that someday she will return to him.  One day, he is informed that she has been found – but upon returning to their home, it becomes immediately apparent to Daniel that although this woman bears a striking resemblance to Liz, she is not in fact his wife.  This only causes Daniel’s co-workers to question his sanity.  When Daniel asks this woman to do some extraordinary things in order to prove her love for him, will he finally be convinced that she really is who she claims?

"R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich":  Emily (Stone) is hired by a spiritual outfit to find someone who is capable of bringing the dead back to life; she is assisted by fellow employee Andrew (Plemons).  There is one condition that must be followed:  this person must be a twin and their sibling has to have passed away.  After trying a few possible candidates and interviewing others, Emily gets discouraged, so she visits her daughter and ex-husband.  When the organization decides to terminate their relationship with Emily, she sets out to prove them wrong; eventually, she meets a young woman (Qualley) who works as a veterinarian that happens to meet the conditions.  But will she be able to revive a corpse?

Review

Sometimes, when reviewing movies, it can be difficult to sufficiently explain exactly how egregious a given motion picture may be; such is now the case with Lanthimos’ latest, “Kinds Of Kindness”.  Although categorized as a comedy-drama, there’s precious little that’s even remotely funny about this film.  Its title could just as easily have been “Kinds Of Cruelty”, “Kinds Of Strangeness” or “Kinds Of Poor Judgment”.  Lanthimos has created something more akin to a triptych of horror stories that don’t have very satisfying conclusions, nor do any of them have protagonists whom you can support. 

Another significant problem with these stories is that they don’t make sense.  Sometimes, it’s a bit of a quandary as to why some characters are doing what they are doing.  Other times, you’re not sure if what you’re seeing on screen is merely a fever dream of one of the characters or if it’s really happening in the context of the story. One other particularly bothersome aspect of “Kinds Of Kindness” is that these scenes can be rather violent, gruesome and bloody, seemingly for no reason whatsoever other than to merely shock the audience.  There is one theme that attempts to tie all of the scenes together but it doesn’t really work. 

Lastly, this was such a disappointing experience in light of the fact that Lanthimos’ previous film, “Poor Things”, was so excellent that one couldn’t help but expect his follow-up to be of equally high quality; alas, this was not to be the case.  Instead, “Kinds Of Kindness” is just plain weird; it is a group of fables that don’t lead anywhere and don’t seem to be especially well thought out. Although Plemons won the best actor award at Cannes for this film, the real bright spot is the performances by Stone and Margaret Qualley; aside from that, there’s nothing noteworthy to recommend this thing because it would be a waste of three hours.  This is self-indulgent and something Lanthimos thought he could get away with it based on the critical success of his prior work.