How do you make sure you give an exceptional actor a good role? Nothing could be simpler: you have to give him three! This is precisely what Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, who won an Oscar at Venice for his crazy Poor creatures. I was very curious in advance to discover his brand new film, Kinds of kindnessa three-hour UFO (yes) to discover in theaters now (perfect for the cinema festival). However, in this feature film, the provocative director, not content with directing his dear Emma Stone again (this is their third collaboration in five years) has decided to honor an actor I admire: Jesse Plemons.
Jesse Plemons is a “second knife” as they say in the industry, an eternal supporting role who manages to steal the show from the biggest Hollywood stars in each of his appearances. Impossible to dissociate it in my eyes from Breaking Badwhere he plays an absolute sadist (a phenomenal revelation) or the very recent Civil Warwhere his appearance (desired by his wife, Kirsten Dunst) was as brief as it was noted. Now, to my great joy, Plemons finally gets the top billing with Kinds of Kindness and since it is a sketch film, structured around three medium-length films, the actor plays three different roles.
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Hence my little introductory comment. It’s a challenge for an actor, and a real performance! So much so that this performance earned Plemons… A Best Actor Award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Deserved in my eyes, I said to myself as I left the theater after three hours of devastating black humor. Because the actor, finally perceived at his true value, is equal to the film he lives through: troubled, disturbing, disturbing…
I enjoyed seeing Jesse Plemons play not one but three roles in this trashy UFO that stirred my head, and my stomach.
If like me you have had the chance to explore the film of Yorgos Lanthimos, Canine (a shock at the Cannes Film Festival at the time) to Poor creaturesa sort of irreverent revisitation of the Frankenstein myth with Candide sauce spiced with trashy sequences and neo-feminist speeches, you know what to expect: provocative sequences, black humor, graphic shocks, sex, discomfort by strings.
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Oh joy: that’s what I observed in this new three-hour feature film, made up of three short films, each telling an amoral, violent and unhealthy story. A radical sadomasochistic relationship, an ultra-paranoid thriller based on doubles who have come to replace us (or not?) and a super weird sect (a gentle pleonasm) make up, to put it simply, the various plots of this patchwork of satirical and sardonic plots. And at the heart of it all, I enjoyed seeing the pleasure felt by Jesse Plemons. He’s having a blast.
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By appropriating the format of the sketch film, very commonplace in the horror genre (we think of Creepshow or Trick or treat), Lanthimos condenses in my opinion to the maximum his art and his disillusioned vision of the world: we take full in the face an incredible quantity of cynicism, cruelty, wickedness. And on the other hand, this exercise is a godsend for an actor, who is therefore forced to multiply masks and costumes, moving from one character to another, multiplying contradictory tones, psychological particularities, moods.
I loved the way Plemons, who is a bit of the absolute antithesis of Emma Stone – because he is as anti-expressive as possible where Stone’s face is quite the opposite – slides with ease from loner to psychopath, from Anonymous in the middle of an existential crisis, totally creepy, from a totally empty-minded mute to a sick anti-hero with the complexity of pure psychiatry. And from one register to another, he disconcerted me, frightened me, made me laugh, almost moved me, frightened me again… A real ride on the Ferris wheel!
And a well-deserved Best Actor Award at Cannes, I can assure you. So trust me and don’t hesitate to explore the crazy and macabre world of Yorgos Lanthimos, who directs his actors like no one else – his muse, Emma Stone, excels in unison in an equally tragicomic sensibility. Kinds of Kindness as Poor Creatures will be hated or adored… But will not leave anyone indifferent.
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