Three types of not-so-nice grips
Filmed in a gray New Orleans which appears very gloomy after a thunderous credits (“Sweet Dreams” by Eurythmics), Kinds of Kindness rrecounts three total dominations: “a man without choices who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman worried because his wife who disappeared at sea has returned and seems to be a different person; and a woman determined to find a very specific person with a special power, destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader. » A specialist in raw and absurd gore and sex, Yórgos Lánthimos perhaps goes even further in his cruel theater by throwing his actors back and forth to give them another role in each act. Without systematizing too much either, new faces are also arriving.
For photography and actors and actresses…
The frames are unique and the photography is still magnificent in Lánthimos, the black humor is there (we love McEnroe’s broken rackets as the ultimate gifts in the first act) and the humans continue to parade around like cruel and merciless animals. soul. A wolf for the man… or the woman who accepts, under the influence, to become a criminal, to be rejected or to cut out her liver. Emma Stone and Margaret Qualley have a poisonous aura worthy of a Brian de Palma film, Willem Dafoe is just as in himself, quite brilliant as an abusive guru all dressed in red underwear. But the shock of these three episodes is Kirsten Dunst’s lover, Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) who has a Dirk Bogarde side in the crazy roles assigned to him by Lánthimos.
A theater without emotion
Nevertheless, despite a unique touch and remarkable know-how, the director of Canine and of The Lobster does not touch us in this trilogy of disjointed puppets where violence for violence’s sake has difficulty transforming into art. Yórgos Lánthimos perfects his art of the image and his deconstruction of the darkness supposed to manipulate humans, but it is too cold and deconstructed to shake us.
