Emma Stone’s latest movie Kinds of Kindness has achieved near-perfection on Rotten Tomatoes after premiering at Cannes Film Festival.
At the time of writing, this absurdist anthology directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) enjoys a 95% rating.
Co-starring Love & Death‘s Jesse Plemons, Nosferatu‘s Willem Dafoe, Cuckoo‘s Hunter Schafer and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘s Margaret Qualley, three stories fill its 165-minute duration: “a man without choice” trying to take control of his life; a policeman’s missing wife returns a different person; and a woman tracking down “someone destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader”.
Related: Poor Things‘ ending is absurd and positively triumphant
Fresh out of the screening, here’s what the movie press thought about Kinds of Kindness:
“The film is a return to Lanthimos’s smaller-scale style, the blunt chilliness that first made him famous. Kinds of Kindness shares the same DNA as Dogtooth or Killing of a Sacred Deer, morbid little tales that verge on outright nihilism. As was also true of Lanthimos’s earlier work, Kinds of Kindness risks alienation.
“Each story ends on a note of puckish discordancy that could be read as a middle finger to the audience, or empty provocation. Those hoping for some sense of grand meaning – or, really, any kind of explanation of what’s going on – are denied. Kinds of Kindness is clever and a bit snide, a curio cabinet not designed for beauty.”
“Small gripes aside, the film is still a more unrestrained version of the filmmaker than we’ve seen of late, and all the better for it. It’s a reminder that he’s still got the heater to throw at us and knock us off our balance.”
“At no point during Kinds of Kindness can audiences pretend to anticipate what will happen next. This long, scaldingly original film enthrals even as it frustrates, defying conventional logic while presenting an absurdist riff on modern society. It’s never boring, and yet, Lanthimos’ outré sensibility demands a special brand of patience (not to mention wariness) from viewers, many of whom will come to see Plemons and Stone stretching beyond their respective comfort zones, only to have the same limits tested in themselves.”
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“Irrespective of the degree to which the three stories are interwoven, this is a work of audacious originality, vicious humour and balls to the wall strangeness, giving the impression there are few places the director won’t go. That includes places of darkness, perversity and mutilation not for the squeamish, but there’s a counterbalancing lightness to Kinds of Kindness that serves the material well.”
“Kinds of Kindness is stiff, plodding, and soporific, even as it seeks to wow us with its deadpan shockeroos. There are hints of kinky but decidedly unsexy sex, a cheerfully grisly sequence in which a character slices off her own thumb with a knife, and an off-camera marital rape; also expect lots of spare, discordant piano plinking, designed to alert us to the jaunty black humour unfolding before us, just in case we don’t get the joke. But Kinds of Kindness is too parched and mannered to be either disturbing or funny or both – and not even its capable cast can rescue it.”
Kinds of Kindness premieres in US cinemas on June 21 and UK cinemas a week later.
Reporter, Digital Spy
Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan’s work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
