Kinds of Kindness * * * *

Emma gets weird for Yogis again

Hot on the heels of his extraordinary Poor Things, Yogis Lanthimos is back with a film that is more in keeping with his earlier films like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and A Lobster.  This would probably have much to do with the fact that Efthimis Filippou who wrote the above two screen plays also collaborated with Yogis on this project. 

Kinds of Kindness is three separate stories, featuring the same core group of actors: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau and a few others.

The wonderful absurd situations, beguiling dialogue, shocking and ridiculous behaviour, is with us again. Along with the blackest of black humour.  It's divisive material.  Not everyone can tune into it. Personally I love it!

The three stories are each presented as a stand-alone film (the casting credit runs at the end of each one).  They are linked around a character named R.M.F (who barely features or says a word). The three stories are set today.

In the first story  Robert is a loyal employee and will do anything his boss asks, including eating what he is told and making family choices on having children. His loyalty is tested though when he is given instruction to kill R.M.F.  

In the second story Daniel is a policeman whose wife is an explorer who has gone missing along with the others in an expedition party. His working partner and the other police are sympathetic to Daniel as he struggles on but he is clearly unfit for duty.  Then she is found by R.M.F. who returns her to Daniel in his helicopter.  But Daniel is convinced that the returned woman is not his wife at all: so he asks her to commit extreme acts to prove his point.

In the third story R.M.F. is a corpse.  Emily and Andrew are loyal adherents to a cult who have the crazy idea that there is a woman out there who can revive the dead. It is their task to track down this woman and bring her into the cult. When Emily compromises herself she is expelled from the sect.  Determined to be brought back into the fold she continues the search for this elusive woman herself.  

Expect surprises and twists in the telling of these stories. Expect madness, shocks and weird - very weird! behavior. (Emma Stone is entrusted with the obligatory Yogis Lanthimos signature dance).