KINDS OF KINDNESS - Mark Reviews Movies

Kinds of Kindness, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2024

Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos makes strange movies, and Kinds of Kindness gives him a chance to assemble three into one project. This anthology movie of a trio of oddball tales features three unique ideas, as well as moments of genuine surprise and insight into the human condition, but once it becomes clear that there isn't much narrative or thematic connection between these stories, the whole affair feels like Lanthimos and co-screenwriter Efthimis Filippou are just getting some clever but half-considered premises out of their collective system.

The one obvious piece of connective tissue here, beyond the shared cast of actors, is a silent character, known only as R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos), who appears in each of them. In one, he's a man who has made a deal that could end his life, and in another, the initialed figure is the pilot of a rescue helicopter. The third and final segment eventually introduces him as a corpse, which is mainly funny because the title promises that the character will somehow eat a sandwich.

If anything, then, the movie is a primarily an exercise in expectations—how the filmmaker establishes them and toys with them in ways that can be, on occasion, genuinely shocking. That sense of disbelief diminishes with each story, because the whole of the movie basically sets up the expectation that each part will try to stun us in some way or another.

The most complete of the short movies is the first one, bluntly but still mysteriously called "The Death of R.M.F." In it, we're introduced to Robert (Jesse Plemons, getting a showcase for his range as a character actor), a businessman in an uncertain business but with one thing that is certain in his life.

That's his relationship with his boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe, who gets the widest span of characters to play across the trio of stories). Calling this employer a micro-manager or a control freak doesn't do him justice. In his after-hour endeavors, Raymond makes up lists and explicit schedules, including particular meals and sexual activity, for people, who presumably are rewarded handsomely, to follow.

For some reason, he has arranged for R.M.F. to show up in a car on a specific street in the middle of the night, and separately, Raymond has ordered Robert to be at an intersecting street at the same time. Ultimately, he wants his employee to intentionally crash into R.M.F.'s car. Robert does so but not with the sort of impact for which Raymond was hoping. That puts the two at odds, because Robert doesn't want to kill someone for his boss but Raymond either wants that result or doesn't care about the possibility.

As a study of control and what happens to a person who finds himself suddenly outside of it, the segment is compelling in its mounting discomfort, especially when Robert confesses to his wife Sarah (Hong Chau) how much of her own life has been affected by Raymond without her knowledge, and its strange details, such as Raymond's gifts of sports-related violence (a broken tennis racket and the flame-scarred helmet of a dead racecar driver). His separation from Raymond turns Robert into a desperate, pathetic man, leading to an encounter with Rita (Emma Stone) that can't be a coincidence.

Plemons and Stone lead the next segment, called "R.M.F. Is Flying," which has the former playing Daniel, a cop hoping for the return of his missing wife, played by the latter, who disappeared on a research expedition. This is the easily the weakest of the three tales, since it seems exclusively based on trying to shock us with things such as a recorded orgy, excessive police violence, paranoia about or the reality of enigmatic doppelgangers taking over people's lives, and, finally, cannibalism. Constantly shifting in its aims, the section does at least serve to highlight the scope of talent from the ensemble, as Plemons turns sinister, Stone behaves as an impenetrable puzzle, and Dafoe is just a mundane father worried about his daughter.

The final segment—as previously suggested, titled "R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich"—puts Stone in the lead as Emily, a true-believer member of a cult that reveres water, worries about bodily contamination, and is looking for a messianic figure who can resurrect the dead. She and Andrew (Plemons) are searching for this person among candidates provided by the cult's leaders Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Chau), and Emily eventually has a dream that points her toward one of two twins, both played by Margaret Qualley (who has a fun role in the first section and also appears in the second).

This one's stronger than its predecessor, especially since a late turn involving Emily's participation in the cult puts it on a similar thematic level as the first segment (She has a family she has abandoned for the group). That it retroactively makes the middle portion feel like even more of an outlier is inevitable, as is the eventual course of the plot (An oddly placed twist after the cast credits is a wicked punch line, at least).

It would be nice to speak of Kinds of Kindness more in terms of a complete package than by way of each segment's individual strengths and shortcomings. This anthology, though, is ultimately shallow in that way, leaving each story to occasionally succeed on its own merits. The first does for sure, and after that, it's decidedly a mixed bag.

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