It makes Poor Things look positively mainstream.

Comprised of three separate stories, Kinds of Kindness follows unorthodox characters in unorthodox relationships.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos returns once again, with stars Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, since Poor Things earlier this year. Once again, audiences are greeted with another surrealist experience. Perhaps not as unintentionally divisive, but no less alienating.
Joined by Jesse Plemons (Civil War) Hong Chau (The Whale) and Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood) all the actors play different roles and characters in each story. Only the subtle hints of themes ties these stories together; the film functioning like an anthology series, with a credit role and title denoting when one ends and another begins.

It is… a strange beast.

First things first, audiences expecting a film of similar pacing to Poor Things should readdress that expectation. Kinds of Kindness is a slow movie. It is also a quiet movie; if you have brought snacks with you, you probably won’t get to eat any of them. There is barely any music; with scenes playing out in stilted, awkward silence. Vast pauses between dialogue could feel like eons.

With this tranquillity comes a willingness to withhold information from the audience. Characters do not exposit, they do not express themselves in a traditional manner. The film begs for the attention of curious minds; an audience who can perceive and elude to facts that aren’t laid bare, to read between the lines. What this leads to is a movie with excellent performances that hold you on every word, a directorial style that is lean and efficient and clever.

But… what is it all in service of?

What the film is about is a vexing question. This is the definition of “artsy-fartsy” cinema, or avant garde cinema. The three stories do not appear to be taking place in the same chronology, the characters do not interact across the stories or appear in multiple stories. All except for R.M.F, the first character introduced, who appears in all three but does not narratively link them. Meanwhile the actors, Jesse Plemons for example, plays different characters and different roles in each story.
This will probably perplex audiences who aren’t prepared for it. But it does allow for a low tone of levity, reminding of the comedic escapades of Monty Python; where the same actor will play multiple characters. When Willem Dafoe swans into a scene, you know the tone is about to shift.

Thematically, the three contained stories address hard subjects with both haunting intent and black humour. Predominantly, the themes of toxic relationships and psychosis are rife throughout. From Plemon’s businessman whose relationship with his boss is deeply troubling, to Emma Stone’s loving wife who returns to her husband after a long absence.
But nothing can exactly be taken at face value, either. Along with the subtle direction, the storytelling is so vague or subtle that the viewer is sometimes left to judge the characters’ actions.

It is a weird experience. The near-silent audio, the spiking audio cues, the themes of corrupted relationships, makes for an unsettling experience. It isn’t your regular drama. It can be extremely blue when it wants to be. Plemons’s nostalgic home movie of his missing wife is not what you expect. The levity that exists is genuine, though, and is extremely welcome whenever it shows up. The tone is consistent, although its persistence for nearly three hours is taxing.

Each story is interesting in itself. All three back to back is excessive. Perhaps, similarly to Killers of the Flower Moon, this was designed with streaming in mind.