'Kinds of Kindness' premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in spring and is poised for release in the UK at the end of this week. The newest film by Yorgos Lanthimos, written by the Poor Things Academy Award® nominee and Efthimis Filippou, is a trilogy wrapped in a single piece of work - a movie tackling control, the absurd, and power dynamics in three parts, played by the same eight main actors, cast in different roles for each section. Architecture, a silent protagonist, is another constant throughout, setting the scene in a way only the built environment can and helping to tell Lanthimos' story.
'Kinds of Kindness' delves into themes often found in Lanthimos' world. Tragic irony, a sense of the surreal, and a sprinkle of the magical blend in a trio of stories that are only loosely interconnected through topics and places - offering different takes on the Greek director's fascinations. His star-studded cast, featuring a compact but expertly appointed team, includes Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer; the power of architecture in film becomes their co-star.
