By M. Sellers Johnson.
Through acute genre-defying sensibilities of black comedy, arbitrary of conduct, supernatural inflections, and elusive drama, the multi-narrative Kind of Kindness presents messy, yet biting tales of humanity beset by submission, conspiracy, and cults of persuasion.”
Kinds of Kindness (2024) is a vigorous power play of peculiar social dynamics, sexual taboos, and blistering provocations of the human condition. It evokes a signature sense of arbitrariness and bitter irony that typifies the work of Yorgos Lanthimos. Provisionally titled R.M.F. and later AND, the film contains a triptych of cryptic narratives, each lightly revolving around the reticent figure R.M.F (Yorgos Stefanakos). Stefanakos (a non-actor friend of Lanthimos and co-writer Efthimis Filippou) appeared briefly in Poor Things (2023) and is the first and the last character to appear onscreen in this film. Curiously, his presence in Kinds of Kindness instills apparent contradictions that bind Lanthimos’ three stories together. The presence of R.M.F. keeps these devious, violent, and disquieting episodes rooted in something larger, and more significant, despite his position as an apparent background character. However, at the forefront of the anthology film, violence and perversity erupt within each dark tale. The very title of the film bespeaks this bleak irony.
Each chapter title describes a brief activity involving R.M.F. that proves to be quietly central to the individual plots. Often these moments are infused with black comic tones that underlie the central narratives. Much like a vignette play, Lanthimos uses the same coterie of actors for each story in the overarching film: Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Emma Stone, and a cameo from Hunter Schafer in the final segment. As these actors embody new characters within each section, they get a chance to experiment and flex new attitudes beyond their previous character portrayals. As they do, power dynamics shift, violence and sex reverberate, and at times, the supernatural is invoked in elusive ways. At its core, Kinds of Kindness explores the nature of humanity, when tested with confounding, damaging, and arbitrary social structures. These systems press down the characters, compelling them towards capricious and horrific decisions, all in the name of love and acceptance—themes that persist in most of his films. Still, Kinds of Kindness offers new deviant storylines that continue to indulge in the provocations and sly comedic conceits that have made Lanthimos one of the most recognizable and marketable filmmakers in art cinema today.
Zooming out to view his larger oeuvre, Lanthimos has long held the attention of critics for his unusual narratives, peculiar monotone style of performances that he elicits from his actors, and questionable use of violence. However, his previous two features carry some noticeable changes from his early films, informed by larger budgets, increasing popularity with audiences, and askew period settings. Beginning with The Favourite (2018), Emma Stone joins him as his most recent muse, screenwriter Tony McNamara becomes a central writing collaborator, narratives are set in more surreal aristocratic worlds, and his directorial approach elicits slightly less muted performances from his actors. The more visually expressive nature of these features and prolific accolades surrounding the release of Poor Things have elevated Lanthimos to newfound popularity in the U.S. However, for more attentive admirers, he has long been a filmmaker of critical interest, with Dogtooth, winning the Un Certain Regard at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in 2009, and The Lobster (2015), which was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards. In Kinds of Kindness, though, Lanthimos returns to more of his creative roots by co-writing the film with Filippou, who he collaborated with on his first two major Greek-language films, Dogtooth and Alps (2011), as well as his first two English-language films, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017).
The arguably stronger nature of these earlier films, compared to his last two ventures, augurs a return to form, of sorts. In Kinds of Kindness, Lanthimos also shows an ability to employ an A-list cast and generate a highly marketable art film—a trend which seems all the more apparent in recent years, as the lines between commercial and art cinema continue to blur into an off kilter tapestry of “artistic” entertainment. His intensified output in recent years, along with larger budgets, has generated more lavishly decorated and eccentric films. This is especially apparent since his collaboration with Stone and is set to continue with his forthcoming project Bugonia (2025).
The deadpan qualities that typify his directorial approach have worked best in his writing partnership with Filippou, which offers (arguably) better world-building than the pseudo-aristocratic narratives of The Favourite and Poor Things. What is apparent in the Lanthimos-Filippou collaborations, is the subversive nature of word associations, elusive identity, and social meaning-making. The screenwriting duo tends to upend conventions of social structures, dismantling and interrogating the “real life” functions of sociality, often through the lens of absurdism and anti-realism. His work circumvents clear genre boundaries, and the rhythmic nature of “inexpressive” dialogue early in his career builds a sense of immersion into his askew narratives. Often there is an oblique, synthetic quality apparent in these films and a disquieting mood that’s imparted through bizarre relationships, arbitrary social rules, and other strange affectations. One common theme throughout his oeuvre is control and resisting the uncanny control or abuse of others. Whether it is the Father (Christos Stergioglou) who holds his children captive from the world through absurd propaganda in Dogtooth, the domineering relationship between the Gymnast (Ariane Labed) and the Coach (Johnny Vekris) that bookends Alps, Martin (Barry Keoghan) and his clinical, existential threats to the Murphy family in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, or the power struggle for the affections of Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) in The Favourite, each of Lanthimos’ projects concerns the dangers of interpersonal control and the aftershock this has on people striving for love and liberation in cruel and abusive worlds, not too far off from our very own.
One common fixture of his work, that imbues his unnerving narratives with confident and erratic energy, is his penchant for dance scenes. We see his partner Ariane Labed performing rhythmic gymnastics routines in the opening and final scenes of Alps, Angeliki Papoulia showcases an erratic Flashdance-esqe number at a family gathering in Dogtooth, The Favourite and Poor Things both exhibit bizarre dance hall sequences, in The Lobster various players dance solitarily in the woods to unknown personal headphone tunes, and Stone relishes in a deeply ironic and humorous dance sequence at the close of Kinds of Kindness. These expressions reflect the candidness of his characters often showcased through their bold declarations and odd physical expressions. As such, these motions are acts of joy and desperation amidst the cruelty and confines of their respective worlds.
This sense of comic cruelty pervades each of the episodes in Kinds of Kindness. In “The Death of R.M.F.,” we see a man wrestle to break free from a masochistic relationship, and then struggle to live without it. In “R.M.F. is Flying,” the mysterious return of a police officer’s shipwrecked wife incites a paranoid conspiracy that leads to shocking acts of violence in the name of love. In the final story, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” two cultists are driven to track down a supposed messianic figure while facing exploitation (both willing and unwilling) themselves. Commonalities across the triptych center around people so desperate for genuine connection, that they subject themselves to obscene acts of cruelty, and, in turn, harm others to quell these emotional distresses. The fantastic and truly bewildering nature of these individual stories holds a metaphorical broken mirror up for viewers to reflect upon the arbitrary social systems and willing acts of harm that exist within our own world. But for all of Lanthimos’ questionable perversity in Kinds of Kindness, he is inciting ambivalent inquiries on the nature of humanity and how far we might go in our desperation for acceptance from others.
While the extremities present in Lanthimos’ work often work well for his creative perspective, there do remain some problematic limitations evident in his recent films. Sexual gratuity certainly has its place in interrogating humanity, relationships, and their inherent disfunctions; but at a certain point, it seems to exceed its purpose. Poor Things finds Stone’s Bella Baxter in a number of candid sexual situations that do not shy away from explicity and vulnerability. And part of her journey to self-actualization is through these sexual experiences. However, this repetition quickly feels unnecessary and even exploitative. Perhaps, even coming off as Lanthimos having an inappropriate interest in showcasing his actors’ bodies. A similar moment occurs in the second segment of Kinds of Kindness, which finds a few of his actors in a random sexually explicit scene, and while the scene does provide a moment of dark humor, the choice just feels gratuitous and unnecessary, like Lanthimos is asking a vulnerability of his actors that isn’t truly needed for the story. As with violence, there’s a later moment in “R.M.F. is Flying,” where Stone subjects herself to self-harm that really pushes this boundary as well. Qualley, as twin sisters Rebecca and Ruth, finds herself in similar situation of sexuality and violence that teases at a needless indecency for its own sake. Art films often take such risks in attempting to sublimate potential exploitation for measures of greater artistry: consider the career work of Isabelle Huppert or Charlotte Gainsbourg. But such bold takes also run the risk of falling short of their higher intentions. For Lanthimos, at best, he is a creative provocateur of human interest. At worst, he indulges affronting material to the point of misogyny.
Kinds of Kindness certainly indulges in excess provocation, and most of it works to humorous effect or intrigue. What else might one expect from a Lanthimos project? But to be sure, this is by far his most intense and explicit film to date. His actors are surely bear all and their commitment carries the film beyond its many questionable moments with Plemons, Qualley, and Stone as the most outstanding players in this troupe. Their work, as well as the larger cast, elevates the content from being purely exploitative, at least most of the time. Including Schafer in the first two stories would have likely balanced the film more and seemed like a real missed opportunity. Still, one might hope for her return in future Lanthimos projects, following suit with Qualley’s extended screen time here, after a brief appearance in Poor Things.
Kinds of Kindness may not be the full sum of its parts, but it is a rich and entertaining text with enough going for it to elicit further thought. The film’s unsettling and sensual provocations evoke shocking refractions of human desperation, paranoia, and irony. The arbitrary sensibilities that pervade the film (and Lanthimos’ extended work) prove central to the ironies of human drama, but there is, indeed, a sweeter center through all of this in the title character. R.M.F. seems to ground these horrific travails with an optimistic essence. He rescues Stone’s “Liz” from an island of human-behaving dogs, facilitates Plemons’ return home in the first chapter, and is literally resurrected during the denouement. His survival also implies that these seemingly disparate stories may be more connected than we initially perceive. Nonetheless, R.M.F. is the most benign and exceptional player in all of these odd tragedies. He is both a victim and survivor, and his position at the onset and close of Kinds of Kindness is one of the rare acts of kindness, in and of itself—perhaps an unknowingly shrewd and subversive example of irony that sets the tone for all of Lanthimos’ worlds. Eurythmics’ opening track “Sweet Dreams” also establishes an important tone that infuses a pop-propulsive musicality with the darker content of its lyrics, which detail the seductive power plays of humanity.
Despite its misgivings, the film is a rare bit of fun, even after its unsettling, blunt ending. It is a project that goes too far and is cushioned by comedic pinpoints, yet still thrives in its ambiguities. It also evidences a growing trend of high production and widely distributed art films, that blend a highly marketable cast with abject material; further blurring the lines between art and ostensibly commercial filmmaking. For a keen viewer, Kinds of Kindness also offers rich traces and artistic flares of Lanthimos’ earlier films. Herein, he utilizes surreal black-and-white interludes, first introduced in Poor Things. The power dynamics present throughout each episode recall similar social oddities apparent in Dogtooth and Alps. Animals and human elicit some uncanny posthuman relationships, as presented in The Lobster. And the tone of the anthology most echoes that of The Killing of a Sacred Deer. There is even a small spaghetti allusion in “R.M.F is Flying” that subtly threads the two films.
Through acute genre-defying sensibilities of black comedy, arbitrary of conduct, supernatural inflections, and elusive drama, Kind of Kindness presents a messy, yet biting tale(s) of humanity beset by submission, conspiracy, and cults of persuasion. For Lanthimos’ searing and unusually engaging films, all his characters claw in desperation for love and fulfillment—something all too human. For better or worse, sweet dreams are made of this.
M. Sellers Johnson is an independent scholar and editor whose research interests include French art cinema, transnationalism, historiography, and aesthetics. He received his MA from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2021 and his BA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2018. His work has appeared in Afterimage, Film International, Film Quarterly, Media Peripheries, Mise-en-scène, Offscreen, and sabah ülkesi, among other outlets. He is the founding Citation Ethics Editor for Film Matters, and the current Book Reviews Editor for New Review of Film and Television Studies.