Kinds of Kindness
2024
**½
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer, Jerskin Fendrix
Yorgos Lanthimos' absurdist and darkly comic (read: not very funny) drama tells three separate stories that portray twisted power dynamics. Despite the title, there is no kindness on display. In The Death of R.M.F., the best of the three, a young man lets his domineering boss control every aspect of his life. In R.M.F. Is Flying, a policeman is convinced that his wife, who was rescued at sea, is an imposter. In the longest episode, R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich, a member of a sex cult, who abandoned her own family, is looking for a woman who can reanimate the dead. This is a quintessential Yorgos Lanthimos film: a cold, disturbing, and sexually twisted collection steeped in subtext and symbolism, which is never much fun to watch. It's nearly 3 hours long, and I could really feel it in the final 30 minutes. The performances are excellent, though.
