Blood, sweat and tears. Yorgos Lanthimos’s return to his Greek Weird Wave roots is wet with the stuff. Bodily fluids spurt, drip, and dribble with such consistency in Kinds of Kindness that it forces you to reckon more deeply with the phrase – who, exactly, is worthy of our blood, sweat, and tears, a dedication so profound that we’d be willing to shed from our own bodies for it? And what do we expect in return?
Lanthimos’s anthology of three fables is a new way into the director’s old creative obsession with dominance and submission. His work with screenwriter Tony McNamara, on 2018’s The Favourite and 2023’s Poor Things, brought him newfound mainstream acceptance and a shelf full of Oscars. Here, he returns to collaborate with Efthimis Filippou, with whom he co-wrote his 2009 breakout Dogtooth, its follow-up Alps and his first two English-language features: The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
