Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Kinds of Kindness' - Enter Yórgos Lánthimos' The Twilight Zone

After the box office acclaim of The Favourite and Poor Things, Yórgos Lánthimos reunites with his long-time writing partner Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) for a strange anthology triptych that is darker and far more surreal than his recent output. 

Kinds of Kindness tells three distinct stories using the same acting troupe in different roles, and it’ll prove divisive for fans of The Favourite and last year’s Poor Things. This triple helping of Lanthimos’ return to his Greek Weird Wave roots feels like it’s for the OG fans who miss that queasy malaise felt during the indelibly bleak Dogtooth and troubling The Killing of a Sacred Deer. 

Best of all though is that what could feasibly have been a fun but disposable victory lap following the award-winning Poor Things is actually nothing of the sort.  

It’s intoxicatingly strange, sexy, hilarious, enigmatic. And bleak in all the right ways. 

The first segment, “THE DEATH OF R.M.F”, follows a submissive office worker Robert (Jessie Plemons) whose dominating corporate oligarch of a boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe) dictates everything he does. Everything.What he wears, drinks, eats. Who he meets and marries. When (and if) he has sex with his wife.  

And you thought your boss was a micromanaging nightmare... 

It’s a routine that has become comfortable for Robert, but all goes to pot when he cannot accept one of Raymond’s more out-there demands. This refusal sees him cut loose and having to finally make decisions for himself. It also introduces him to Emma Stone’s character Rita, who may be more willing than Robert to acquiesce to dark requests... 

The second, “R.M.F IS FLYING”, sees Plemons play Daniel, a police officer whose wife Liz (Stone) has gone