KINDS OF KINDNESS
Yorgos Lanthimos, three shades of kindness
Only a few months after the release of Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos joins the Competition with Kinds of Kindness. Could this be the film that will earn him the Palme d’or after his Jury Prize for The Lobster in 2015, and his Best Screenplay award for The Killing of a Sacred Deer in 2017?
A new fable by Yorgos Lanthimos, Kinds of Kindness juxtaposes three quests. A man who seeks control of his life, a policeman who finds his wife lost at sea and doesn’t recognize her, and a woman in search of a person with exceptional power.
Written with his long-time partner Efthimis Filippou, the plot is served by a cast that is, to say the least, prestigious. All three stories are starred by the same actors. Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley and Willem Dafoe are back by the director’s side, along with Jesse Plemons, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer.
In Kinds of Kindness, the director continues his exploration of free will and conformism: “It’s interesting to observe how humans think they control things or are free to decide on them, while once they have this freedom, they find it difficult to manage.”
This latest film marks another milestone in the unstoppable rise of Yorgos Lanthimos. In 2010, his career changed directions with Canine, which won the Prix Un Certain Regard, and showed the world the quirky aesthetic and gritty tone of the Greek weird wave, the movement of which he was the figurehead.
In the years that followed, he left Greece to create his own style, sometimes disturbing, always fascinating. There, he attracted the best performers (Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Emma Stone), and developed every aspect of his art, winning four Oscars for Poor Things last March.
