Kinds of Kindness is a film that forces you to close your eyes, and occasionaly, your ears. Brutally explicit, the new film of Greek film director Yorgos Lanthimos follows quickly after the release of his succesful film Poor Things. 

 Whereas Poor Things was brought to life in collaboration with screen writer Tony McNamara, Lanthimos returns to Efthimis Filippou for the script of Kinds of Kindness. The shift is palpable; whereas Poor Things finds itself a fantastical and undefinable setting, Kinds of Kindness pulls the viewer into a world very much like our own.  

Divided into three parts, Kinds of Kindness tells three different stories around human relationships, driven to the extreme – featuring the same actors and actresses (e.g. Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, William Defoe and Margaret Qualley) as different characters. Each of them peculiar in their own way, work hard on getting under your skin. The three stories float between conforming to a thriller, a drama or a comedy with some fantastical elements. These blurred borders and the slow pace of it doesn’t make it a kind film for the viewer. And therefore keeps you at a certain distance.  

This distance however does not withhold the viewer from empathizing with the characters. The scenery and dialogue in the films of Lanthimos feel like peeking into the brain of someone, they feel like inside thoughts spoken out loud. As if one is getting closer to an inner thought process that feels so foreign, yet familiar as one digests what is happening. We might not continuously understand why and how – but there is a feeling of recognition that can be sensed in the chuckles and squirms of the audience. It dives into the dependency on the people around us – a craving that leads to peculiar actions, actions that freak us out (e.g. the act of cutting your own finger off for your partner to eat) but their symbolic value reminds us of our need to be recognized and loved.  

Kind of kindness shows us the extremes of human emotion in an abstract, absurd way. It does not complete the act of crawling under your skin. However, the essence of it, enlarged by grotesque characters with visible flaws and some magic realism, is there. And at the core of it, Lanthimos manages yet again to hold a mirror up. One that seems to reflect differently with every film he makes – visibly so when comparing his two latest films. And this time, it asks you to reflect on your kindness to the people close to you.   

Written by Luca Deutinger