The Big Picture

Kinds of Kindness
is a return to form for Yorgos Lanthimos, dissecting love and connection with his distinct dark sense of humor.
Boasting a standout performance by Jesse Plemons, the film explores toxic relationships and our desire for meaning without compromising.
Lanthimos showcases darkly comedic flair as he kicks off some rust, proving he can operate at various speeds in his career.

These days, it’s hard to know what version of Yorgos Lanthimos we’re going to get in his films. Are we going to get the Dogtooth Lanthimos that isn’t afraid to get truly weird? Or are we going to get something closer to The Favourite that grounds itself a bit more? Both are interesting, but there are distinct eras of Lanthimos that he has gone through over time. That’s what makes Kinds of Kindness such a fascinating experience. In many regards, it’s the Lanthimos of an earlier era. Much as he’s done in the past, this film dissects the casual cruelty of love and relationships through a combination of the filmmaker’s distinct sense of dark humor that occasionally flirts with something closer to a more strange sociological horror.

Kinds of Kindness (2024) A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning and a woman’s quest to locate an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.Release Date June 21, 2024 Main Genre Comedy Writers Yorgos Lanthimos Efthimis Filippou Studio(s) Film4 , Element Pictures , TSG Entertainment Distributor(s) Searchlight Pictures

Most importantly, it does so without any restraint, caring little about making itself palpable to a broad audience who is looking for a more accessible and straightforward narrative. In other words, it’s a return to form after Poor Things which, while still frequently quite inventive, felt oddly like the director playing it safe. There is none of that here, as he constructs a triptych of toxicity and tension, ambling through absurd scenarios with the same ensemble of actors taking on various parts. Each is quite different, with it peaking in the first part while remaining tied together by a delightfully dark tone as it reflects on the lengths we’ll go for connection.

What Is ‘Kinds of Kindness’ About?

The opening of this centers on Jesse Plemons in the first of a series of great performances that are up there with his very best work. We open with Robert, who has essentially turned over his life to his boss, played by a wonderful Willem Dafoe, who picks out everything he does. This includes everything from what he eats to who he is in a relationship with and whether they will have children. It is both a fitting way to start Kinds of Kindness and the best of the bunch, more sharply exploring the ideas that Lanthimos will be playing around in the other segments while bringing the most effective deployment of his sense of humor.

In the next part, Plemons is Daniel, who is a police officer struggling with the disappearance of his wife. Liz (Emma Stone), Daniel’s wife, is a very particular person, having a specific aversion to chocolate, and when she reappears, she suddenly seems to be different. Now she loves chocolate, can’t fit into her shoes, and doesn’t remember Daniel’s favorite song. This one is a little shaky at times, feeling more confined and narrow in its focus, though it still has plenty of macabre fun when it counts. This then picks up in the final part with Stone stepping into the forefront as Emily, a member of a cult who believes they can find someone with the ability to bring people back from the dead. She and Plemons’ Andrew spend their days searching for and testing potential candidates while navigating a strained relationship with her old family.

The journey that each part takes us on has to do less with the rug getting pulled out from under us, even though there is plenty of that, as much as it has to do with what it reveals about the psyche of the characters caught up in it all. All are seeking something that seems perpetually out of reach, making their desperate and often despicable acts to find it all the more engaging. While Lanthimos has again brought in a cast of big-name actors, which also includes the delightful Hong Chau of Showing Up, a madcap Margaret Qualley of Sanctuary, and the measured Mamoudou Athie of Archive 81, it doesn’t feel like he’s leaning on the star power as much as he is using it to smuggle in a more sinister sensibility that had been missing from his recent work. Some get wasted (fans of Hunter Schafer will have to wait for the upcoming Cuckoo to see her really let loose) but the overall experience is well-balanced in playing to everyone’s strengths. However, there is one actor who takes the cake.

Jesse Plemons Is Fantastic in ‘Kinds of Kindness’

In particular, Plemons is operating on just the right wavelength to convey everything from humor to dread, often at the same time. It is as though he has been working with Lanthimos for a lifetime, proving to be the standout of the cast. He is what makes the first section so good, capturing his character’s hilarious yet pathetic sense of insecurity at every turn. This is a tough balancing act to achieve, but he makes it look easy. The scenes where he begins to spiral out of control after standing up for himself are the epitome of tragicomedy, hitting on ideas that Lanthimos explored in The Lobster about how far we are willing to go for love. We don’t get the time to sit with some of these ideas as much as one would hope, but that is largely inevitable when you have to get to the next part. It can keep you on your toes to see it throwing everything out the window, with the interludes between each of the sections proving to be quite fun, but it also lacks the patience of something like The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which had far more room to keep ratcheting up the tension until it reaches a breaking point.

Small gripes aside, the film is still a more unrestrained version of the filmmaker than we’ve seen of late, and all the better for it. It’s a reminder that he’s still got the heater to throw at us and knock us off our balance. This is something I say not as a hater of his recent films, especially The Favourite, as there is a lot of magnificent work being done there, but as someone who was looking for whether the Lanthimos who first began making films was still in there. Kinds of Kindness proves that not only is he able to knock off some rust that may have gathered, but he can do so with plenty of darkly comedic flair left in the tank.

Some of this may come from the fact that Lanthimos has reunited with Efthimis Filippou, who he co-wrote Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer with, but it also is oh so much more than that. There are similarities to their past work together, but there is also a sense that Lanthimos has something to prove this time around, and prove it he does. It’s about a mindset shift in terms of the filmmaking and the focus. Where his last couple of films have been generally about playing things more broadly, the way everything is constructed here is about Lanthimos pushing things in new directions. Forget the ugly fisheye lens of Poor Things, this is about creating a more uncompromising vision from top to bottom. In every intense closeup or stitled line of dialogue, we see a new vision from Lanthimos that feels like a genuine step forward. Whatever he does next, one can only hope it’s more like this.

There may come a time when Lanthimos has to figure out what cinematic identity he wants to have, but this latest film shows he’s got multiple speeds at which to operate. The shifting of gears in his career might not always have been seamless, but his kicking it all back up a notch could not be more welcome to see. When he ends it all with one final dark punchline, proving to be one of his cruelest closing shots, it feels like a statement that he isn’t here to be confined by his more mainstream success. While he was far from dead like the corpses in this film, Kinds of Kindness feels like Lanthimos is himself coming back to life once more.

Kinds of Kindness (2024) REVIEWKinds of Kindness is a return to form for Yorgos Lanthimos, bring his distinctly dark humor and boasting a standout performance by Jesse Plemons.Release Date June 21, 2024 Main Genre Comedy Writers Yorgos Lanthimos Efthimis Filippou Studio(s) Film4 , Element Pictures , TSG Entertainment Distributor(s) Searchlight Pictures ProsAfter some more straightforward successes, Kinds of Kindness proves that Lanthimos still has plenty of weird films left in the tank.All of the cast get their moment to excel, but it’s Jesse Plemons who proves to be the best of the bunch.With a strong opener and closer, Lanthimos again dissects our toxic relationships with plenty of flair to spare. ConsThe middle section is a little more confined and the overall film doesn’t have the room to build tension like Lanthimos has in the past.

Kinds of Kindness had its World Premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.