If you’ve seen Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies before, you kind of know what to expect: It’s going to make you squirm a bit, whether that be through interpersonal awkwardness or grotesque bodily harm or unglamorous sex. And why settle for one movie full of cringiness when you can have three? This new film of his, “Kinds of Kindness,” is just that, a triptych of three films presented on one ticket.
I first became familiar with the concept of a triptych (in art, usually a set of three related paintings intended to be displayed together) when a former roommate of mine suggested we get one of Francis Bacon’s to brighten up our living space. After Googling them, however, I wasn’t sure they were something I’d want to see every day. They are...not pleasant. You could say something similar about this triptych—also something I’d probably pass on seeing every day. Seeing it once, though, is an experience his fans will enjoy.
The films feature the same cast, the same eerie piano and vocal score, the same terrestrial—almost Floridian—backdrops, and… random remarks about people’s weight? They also all have some degree of surreality woven into an otherwise familiar world, reminiscent of Haruki Murakami’s fiction (on which recent films “Burning” and “Drive My Car” are based), where things are just a little off and never quite explained.
The first film, “The Death of R.M.F.,” features a character (Jessie Plemons) whose entire life is orchestrated by another man (Willam Dafoe), who dictates when he wakes, when he has intercourse, who he marries, how much food he consumes and when he consumes it, and just about everything else one could consider. When asked to kill random stranger, though, he draws the line, and his "boss" dismisses him. Unfortunately, after years of being told what to do and when, he’s got no idea how to function in his own life and desperately tries to win his role back.
In the second, “R.M.F. is Flying,” a husband (Plemons) grieves his missing wife (Emma Stone) until she reappears one day, miraculously rescued from an island where she'd been marooned on with her friends. However, a few things about her seem off to her husband, and eventually, he begins to suspect she’s not his real wife.
“R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” the last of the trio, follows two cult members (Plemons and Stone) searching for a woman who, according to an offscreen prophecy of some kind, possesses a supernatural gift for raising people from the dead (and also does, like, regular healing). Stone's character, however, is still preoccupied with the family she’d abandoned to join the cult, putting their mission and her membership in jeopardy when she visits them.
If you’re wondering who R.M.F. is, he’s...just a guy. Doesn’t say much, but he’s the only character that seems to be in all three films in some capacity. He’s played by Lanthimos’s friend, Yorgos Stefanakos, who has no acting credits outside of Lanthimos’s films.
R.M.F. aside, it’s simple enough to pick out the formal and tonal through lines in this triptych, but the thematic ones prove more difficult. Looking to the title for a hint, there’s a discernible question: what is kindness, really—and what are different ways it might manifest at its boundaries? The characters in these films are far from kind in typical baked-you-some-bread ways, but maybe in sliced-off-my-finger-because-you-asked ways they are? At the least, they help reflect on what it could mean to be kind in a world that’s this weird and cruel.
If you don’t feel like pondering that, though, you can also just enjoy the film; it’s pretty funny and entertaining, even if a bit gross. It should be said that the combination of unnerving content and a one-after-another format and can lead to some dread of the subsequent film (Omg, I have to deal with another one of these?) But then the next one starts, and it's all okay. They’re all just so well told. The strangeness at the outset of each all but requires that you stay tuned for an explanation, and before you know it, you’re immersed. One doesn’t watch a woman painstakingly evaluate the distance between another woman’s nipples, for example, and not stay to find out what the heck is going on.
Given this excellent cast, it should come as no surprise that the performances are great. Stone and Plemons serve as the anchors while Dafoe, Joe Alwyn, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, and Mamoudou Athie support with aplomb, each playing three different characters of varying prominence.
Mr. Lanthimos has been prolific of late, cranking out about one film a year. Off-putting as they may be, they’re also original, incredibly well executed, and have nothing to do with a multiverse. If acute visceral discomfort is the price to pay for something like that, I, for one, will pay it every time. Keep doing you, Yorgos.
