What is “Kinds of Kindness”, the latest film with Emma Stone, worth?

After marking the start of the year with Poor Creatures which awarded Emma Stone the Oscar for best actress, Yórgos Lánthimos is back with cinema as crazy as ever.

Yórgos Lánthimos is an atypical director. A singular filmmaker, winner of prestigious awards ranging from the Venice Film Festival to Cannes, via Hollywood and its Oscars.

The Oscars were also marked by the talent of the filmmaker with the sacrament of two actresses: Olivia Coleman for La Favorite in 2018 and Emma Stone this year for Poor Creatures.

Moreover, they both walked away with the Oscar for best actress.

_{If you missed it, it’s on Disney+}

This new film, entitled Kinds of Kindessdoes not deviate from this rule sinceActor Jesse Plemons won the Best Actor Award during the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

Subversive filmmaker, Yórgos Lánthimos fascinates as much as it divides as his filmography is each time a phantasmagorical journey against a backdrop of social unease, delivered like dreams on film.

The director became known internationally with The Lobster (2015), which allowed the general public to discover his oh-so-satirical style in a generally more conventional cinematic landscape.

Lánthimos is one of those directors like Ari Aster (Midsummer), Gaspard Noé (Climax), Alex Garland (Civil War) ou Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse) to offer cinematic experiences often cruel and disturbing.

Three stories for the price of one

Kinds of Kindess literally translates to “Kinds of Kindness” and takes the form of three stories raising this question:

The film explores this theme in a cynical triptych on influence, whether in the world of work, in relationships or even through religion. Environments in which humans have an unfortunate tendency to leave their free will to others out of a need for recognition.

Each of his stories is carried by the same cast, playing different characters during the different segments. A relatively prestigious cast since we find Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hunter Schafer, Hong Chau as well as Margaret Qualley (the daughter of Andy Macdowell) and Joe Alwyn (known to be the ex of Taylor Swift) .

Thus, we can see Jesse Plemons playing an office worker so submissive to his boss, played by Willem Dafoe, that he dictates how to manage every element of his life, from his clothing to the woman he marries.

In the following segment, the same actor (Jesse Plemons) takes on the role of a police officer marked by the disappearance of his wife, played by Emma Stone. When she is found safe and sound, her husband sinks into a strange paranoia, convinced that his wife is in reality a usurper.

Finally, the third segment is carried by Emma Stone, who plays a woman abandoning her family to follow the guru of a sect (Willem Dafoe) whose dogma forbids any mixing of fluids with others under penalty of finding herself contaminated. If the context is different each time, each of the characters will be confronted with this same reality: making unreasonable choices out of devotion.

Three chapters, three different stories and the same troupe of actors: it’s an anthology format that we saw recently taken up on Netflix by director Wes Anderson during his adaptation of Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023). A format much more digestible on a streaming platform than in a cinema seat.

Kinds of Sleepness

Kinds of Kindness is excellent in form. The talent of Yórgos Lánthimos’s direction no longer needs to be proven as he handles symmetrical shots to perfection and demonstrates incredible ingenuity when it comes to surprising the spectator. The artistic direction also, always in tune, constantly reminds us that Yórgos Lánthimos is not only the filmmaker of the strange, he is also the filmmaker of the cool.

A small creation that avoids the empty shell thanks to the certain talent of its actors. Jesse Plemons, revealed in the series Breaking Bad, now plays in the big leagues, whether for Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson. The actor, who, this year again, made an impression with a simple five-minute appearance in the Civil War by Alex Garland, did not steal his Cannes prize.

Emma Stone, for her part, proves once again that she is the best actress of the momentcapable of playing everything and involving himself body and soul in works with artistic ambitions, even if it means leaving his comfort zone and shaking up the viewer.

However, with its anthological format of almost three hours, the film, as good as it is, unfortunately turns out to be indigestible. Prisoner of its length, the viewing is laborious to swallow in one go. Undoubtedly served by the paradigm shift brought about by streaming, Kinds of Kindness would have been much nicer to see in his living room. The viewer’s involvement is undermined by the absence of a concrete narrative thread between the stories and this overabundance of uneasiness inevitably ends up causing one to breathe.

_{Another poseur film that takes your breath away:}

In the absence of an ensemble film and stories with intersecting destinies such as the brilliant Magnolia (1999) or Babel (2006), Kinds of Kindness lives like forced binge-watching of three episodes of a kind of Black Mirror on human relationships. It’s up to you to see if you’re ready for these three stops in the realm of the strange.

Kinds of Kindness by Yórgos Lánthimos has been in theaters since June 29. Duration: 165 minutes.