Review: 'Kinds of Kindness' is an Unexpected Miss by 'Poor Things' Director Yorgos Lanthimos

Like the rest of us, good filmmakers sometimes screw up. David Cronenberg has made several canon-level movies ("Videodrome," "Dead Ringers," etc.), but his mopey 2012 take on the Don DeLillo novel "Cosmopolis," which starred Robert Pattinson, was anti-watchable. Similarly, when the great screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ("Adaptation," "Being John Malkovich") decided to take a shot at directing, the result, very surprisingly, was the uber-boring "Synecdoche, New York." Then, of course, there were the Wachowski siblings, who in 1999 gave us "The Matrix," but then, after two sputtering sequels to that film, went on to inflict upon us such stupefying misfires as "Cloud Atlas" and "Jupiter Ascending."

Which brings us, alas, to "Kinds of Kindness," the new movie by wildman Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Anticipation for this picture has been high and buzzy. Lanthimos's two previous films -- "The Favourite" (2018) and "Poor Things" (2023) -- elevated his career into a new orbit. "Poor Things," especially, with its Oscar-winning production design and fearless star performance by Emma Stone, overflowed with cinematic invention -- a kind of steampunk fantasy triumph for both Lanthimos and his screenwriter, Tony McNamara (who also worked on "The Favourite").

"Poor Things" was going to be a hard movie to top, and with his new film, Lanthimos has in fact not come close to topping it. For reasons difficult to figure, the director decided to cut McNamara loose and instead bring back one of his oldest collaborators, Efthimis Filippou, to help create an original script. Filippou, who began working with Lanthimos on the 2009 "Dogtooth," his snarling international breakthrough, and stuck with him through such subsequent art hits as "The Lobster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," would seem to have a very different sensibility from McNamara's, one that's more inclined toward surrealistic cruelty and avant-cool pretension.

If the cast of this near three-hour movie weren't so strong -- it'd be hard to go entirely off the rails with Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau and, once again, Emma Stone on board -- the picture might have been an even harder watch than it is. Some viewers may be irritated by the story's oblivious impenetrability. It's told in three "chapters," each with its own obscure heading: "The Death of R.M.F.," "R.M.F. Is Flying," "R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich." The significance of this R.M.F. person, and his function in the plot, is not something the writers care to share with us.

In Chapter One, we meet Plemons as Robert, a company man of some sort living with his wife (Chau) in a soulless suburban house somewhere in New Orleans. (Not that you'd guess that -- this is a movie without a tinge of local color in it.) Robert's existence is entirely controlled by his boss, Raymond (Dafoe). Raymond decides what Robert should eat, what he should wear, what he should read (Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is his current assignment), and when he can have sex, among several other things. Robert is fine with all of this until Raymond orders him to deliberately cause a car crash in which someone must die. When Robert asserts the merest wisp of resistance to this command, Raymond exiles him back into the world of unwanted freedom. (Desperate not to be abandoned, Robert proudly tells Raymond he has finished reading "Anna Karenina." "Go fuck yourself," Raymond says.)

Chapter Two: Plemons is now Daniel, a cop whose wife (Stone) has disappeared, but then returns ... or does she? Daniel is convinced the woman now resident in his house isn't his wife at all. But maybe something can be worked out. "I'm hungry," Daniel tells her. "I want you to cut one of your fingers off and cook it with cauliflower. Can you do that for me?" (Spoiler: Yes, she can.)

The final chapter introduces us to a sort of sex cult led by Dafoe and Chau, who are valued by their followers for the spiritual value of their tears and, presumably, their big yacht offshore, where a soon-to-arrive female messiah will be moving in.

I don't want to skip too much (although there's quite a bit worth skipping), so please be aware that there's more than a normal amount of foot consciousness in this movie -- hobbling injuries, too-tight shoes -- and a steady drone of weight-whining (one woman eats an entire chocolate cake, and one version of Plemons finds it to be a pretty big deal). There's also some (off-camera) marital rape, some homophilia, some porn flashes and a bit of talk about an invasive weevil that attacks only palm trees. In other words, something for everybody. Or maybe nobody.

To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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