‘Kinds of Kindness’ review: Forced weirdness by Lanthimos

What disturbs shockmaster Yorgos Lanthimos? Mainstream respect. The provocateur’s last two films, “Poor Things” and “The Favourite,” surprised even longtime Lanthimos fans (myself included) by racking up 21 Academy Award nominations and two actress wins for leads Emma Stone and Olivia Colman, cementing him as one of the greatest women’s directors since George Cukor. Yikes! No punk feels comfortable embraced by the masses, especially when they’ve made a career out of mocking groupthink.

“Kinds of Kindness” is Lanthimos hastily wriggling loose from expectations. He’s scrapped the period piece ballgowns and extravagant cinematography for a triptych of modern skits about the horrors of yearning for approval. Shot in drab crannies of Louisiana, these three misanthropic tales about a micromanaging life coach, a suspicious husband and a rule-bound sex cult are configured from a troupe of talents who take turns abusing each other. Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Stone hold center stage; Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Margaret Qualley buttress the wings.

These slight and samey parables are being hailed as a nasty return to form, which is a polite way of saying that Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthymis Filippou have already said everything in here before: Love is control, acceptance is conditional and autonomy is illusive. “Dogtooth” and “The Lobster,” Lanthimos’s breakthrough marvels, covered the same turf and were creepier, funnier and faster. “Kinds of Kindness” runs nearly three hours in length and reveals nothing more than our eagerness to give him the benefit of the doubt. We’re here for the sick thrills. Instead, what we’re served feels more like dirty limericks delivered at an excruciating pace by a bore with bad breath.

Each segment is named for a bit character (played by Yorgos Stefanakos) whose role in the stories becomes increasingly tenuous. By the final short, the connection between the title — “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” — and the plot is so arbitrary that Stefanakos’ snack takes place during the end credits. That kind of prank feeds into the core question of Lanthimos’ filmography: Why are we beholden to artificial structures? All his films are about people pretzeled into submission. (Only “Poor Things’” Bella Baxter breaks free because her brain hasn’t learned to conform.) What Lanthimos is really asking is why we aren’t suspicious of the people inventing the rules? He’s training the audience to spot hypocrisy. Here, it’s the magnificently gaunt Dafoe ordering Plemons to gain weight, nagging him that, “Skinny men are the most ridiculous thing there is.”

Lanthimos’ worlds operate like a transparent watch exposed straight through to the gears. The fascination come from seeing how each piece of the machine pressures the others to behave. His characters speak their minds without apology. The blunt dialogue pairs best with actors you can read like mood rings, like Colin Farrell with his giveaway eyebrows or Stone, who, when she widens her peepers at the camera, seems to hold the map to the universe in her eyes.

It’s no wonder Lanthimos stays loyal to his favorites. “Kinds of Kindness” is his second feature with Dafoe and Alwyn and his third with Stone. Qualley, vibrating with mischief, plugs in perfectly to the ensemble. During an uncomfortable dinner sequence, there’s a wickedly wonderful shot of her panic as the conversation gets steered to a home video she doesn’t want to see. Cut to the raunchy footage. You feel for her — and you burst into giggles.

But “Kindness” builds more scenes around Plemons and the type of inscrutable acting he does best just doesn’t fit in Yorgosland. Plemons excels when the audience is in suspense about what’s whirring underneath that heavy brow. Is he harmless or violent? Dumb or toying with his prey? His vagueness keeps us on edge, whether as a rogue soldier in “Civil War” or an awkward divorcee in “Game Night.” Here, two of his three characters — both victims and violators — make choices that should land with a sting. Squinting through Plemons’ opacity, they instead come off as stodgy and inevitable, the punchline to a joke you’ve already heard. Still, kudos to the hair team for his three vivid coiffures: an insipid swoop, an aggressive buzz cut and a monkish raze.

The film is fixated on the body, tutting over poundage and measurements and fluids to make the point that we’re all meat sacks buzzing with adrenaline. Characters are forever finding excuses to visit a hospital (never, of course, a psychiatrist — that would ruin the game). Overall, the style is rigid, dreary and institutional with a color palette of sickly bathwater whites. The cinematographer Robbie Ryan likes to behead people just above the nose or spend a scene staring at their feet, getting intimate only for extreme closeups of flossing or French kissing. The rascally cropping creates a few great visual gags, like when Dafoe, in a sharp-witted scene where he stomps on Plemons’ every sputtered line, suddenly stands up and we see that this fearsome negotiator is wearing, of all things, a pair of schoolgirlish knee socks.

Jerskin Fendrix’s score is equally spartan. Sometimes, the piano drills one note over and over like an alarm; at dramatic peaks, it sounds like a cat jumped on the keys. The blast of Eurythmics in the opening seems designed primarily to convince us we’re enjoying ourselves. Ditto Stone’s solo dance scene, a bit of nonsense that feels like an anxious tic inserted to make the movie go viral on TikTok.

I’ve seen “Kinds of Kindness” twice. Both times, I made it to the end having spent hours dwelling on the limits of my own boundaries. I’d been tested, alright — not by these sketches of a society so cruelly puppeteered, but by my commitment to the director I’ve held up for years as a must-watch genius. Like an insecure lover, Lanthimos seems to be pushing his audience away to see if they’ll stick around without all the awards. I suspect he sees this film’s own flaws clearly. If you want to break his heart, deem it a masterpiece.