Greek filmmaker, Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most highly desired directors working in the industry today. Hot off the back of his four-time Academy Award winning fantasy/romance 'Poor Things', Lanthimos has so clearly refused to make his fans wait long for his next feature film, 'Kinds Of Kindness'.
It goes without saying that although both films have their cinematic similarities, if you were to take 'Poor Things', rotate it 180 degrees, give it a change of clothing, cut it's hair and provide it with a completely new identity, it would end up looking something like 'Kinds Of Kindness'.
One factor about this movie that some audience members may not be fully aware of before entering the theatre that they 100% should make themselves aware of is the fact that this is an anthology film. Meaning that there are actually three stories embedded into one 165 minute run-time feature film.
We see a small handful of A-list actors that you may notice have collaborated with the Greek filmmaker before such as Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn all take on the difficult task of portraying three different characters across three different storylines in this movie.
The three individual stories are labelled as the following:
The Death Of R.M.F
R.M.F Is Flying
R.M.F Eats A Sandwich
The most dreaded question and quite simply the worst thing a person could wish to hear upon the completion of viewing this film would be: "What was that about?".
And to be quite frank, the answer remains both unclear and unknown. Given the fact that there are no obvious themes or links between the three stories that seem to stand out amongst audience members, all we are left to do is speculate and debate.
From a personal angle, it seems to me that the conjoining factor across the three stories is the consistent idea of the toxicity of relationships in various scenarios. In 'The Death Of R.M.F' we see Robert (Plemons) and Raymond (Dafoe) play each half of a toxic workplace relationship that has clearly crossed the line of what is appropriate and what is not.
In 'R.M.F Is Flying', we see Daniel (Plemons) grieving in unique ways following the disappearance of his wife, Liz (Stone). Upon her eventual arrival and return to reality, Daniel struggles to come to terms with his wife's reappearance and the unique and different ways she is acting once coming back to normality.
And finally, in 'R.M.F Eats A Sandwich', we see Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) as part of a cult that are desperately in search for a woman they believe possesses the ability to reanimate the dead. The unique and extremely specific ways that Emily and Andrew are forced to live their lives, at the request of the other cult members, becomes toxic and eventually causes the story to take a dark turn.
Although none of the three storylines we see throughout this movie possess any real similarities, they all do have one thing in common, that being various ways in which toxic relationships are portrayed.
Some people will call Lanthimos a genius for his work on this film, this may be because they are still living off of the brilliance of his recent filmography or maybe because they genuinely believe it to be true. But for me this movie feels much more like the product of a director that has received a fair amount of power following his recent productions and has the right to produce whatever they desire.
It may have always been in Lanthimos' plans to write and direct an anthology movie, and for that you have to applaud the Greek filmmaker as he has achieved this dream. But it goes without saying that 'Kinds Of Kindness' fails to scrape the heights that Lanthimos has met throughout his recent filmography with the likes of 'The Favourite' and 'Poor Things'.
Overall Rating: 5/10
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