director Yorgos Lanthimos creates an uneven triptych

The Greek filmmaker still uses a strong formalism which delights his followers and always disenchants his detractors.

If the Greek director has managed to bring together audiences and critics since his beginnings, he also has his detractors. After Killing of the Sacred Deer Or The LobsterYorgos Lanthimos is back, this time in a sketch film.

With Kinds of Kindness, presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it distills into three different stories its acidic vision of a humanity in search of meaning. The film is released in theaters on Wednesday June 26, 2024.

With a classy cast including Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film plays with narrative subtleties that will delight its fans and leave others behind.

In the first shot, an employee attempts to take control of his life, but encounters constant opposition. In the second story, a husband finds his wife missing at sea, but does not recognize her. In the last story, a woman seeking truth in a religious group is invested with the message she had come to seek there.

With Kinds of KindnessYorgos Lanthimos still divides the public as much (the film was whistled as much as applauded at the Cannes Film Festival), a consistency since The Lobster. If the filmmaker demonstrated his art of sophisticated images in his previous films, here he puts all his energy into a complex narrative form. First by telling three stories, then by giving different roles to the same actors in the same story, finally by playing traps where he likes to lose us, without necessarily finding us.

However, as Jean-Luc Godard said, “the important thing is not to understand, but that it is beautiful”. Beautiful, Kinds of Kindness is on many points, notably in the provision of Willem Dafoe, present in all three parts of the film. But there is a sort of descent into hell, each story proving weaker than the previous one. We find the recognizable style of Lanthimos who likes to linger on the gory and anatomical details of damaged, dislocated, broken bodies, like unstructured lives, in search of a distant harmony, which, once achieved, turns out to be boring. Yorgos Lanthimos is therefore true to himself, the surprise always operates, even if we can once again find the director very formal.

Gender : Drama
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Actors: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hong Chau, Susan Elle, Merah Benoit, Jess Weiss (II), Victoria Harris
Country : Ireland / Great Britain / United States
Duration : 2h44
Exit : June 26, 2024