Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos explores control and submission in new film

This is a wonderfully acted absurdist drama that made me look away at times and laugh out loud at others.

Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe in Kinds of Kindness. Picture: Atsushi Nishijima

Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2015 film The Lobster opens with a woman parking her car somewhere rural, entering a field, pulling out a pistol, walking to a drove of donkeys and shooting one in the head. By the end of the film we can assume her motive but lots of questions remain unanswered.

I mention this because Lanthimos’s 10th film, Kinds of Kindness, marks a return to earlier works such as Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). The co-writer of those three films, the director’s Greek compatriot Efthimis Filippou, returns for this new one.

(L-R) Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Ed Guiney attend the UK Special Screening of Kinds of Kindness. Picture: Getty

These ominous fables about the human condition are deliber­ately unsolvable puzzles. You will leave the cinema a bit baffled. This has a polarising effect on audiences. The Athens-born filmmaker has dedicated fans but he also has people who walk out and wonder whether to return next time. His most accessible film, the 18th-century black comedy The Favourite (2018), is his most successful in terms of budget versus box office. His most recent film, Poor Things (2023), is the first time he topped $US100m ($148m) in ticket sales. He has received six Oscar nominations but has yet to win.

Poor Things, his best film to date, is unconventional but what happens in it does so for a reason. It may be hard to believe, but that’s a different kettle of fish. Kinds of Kindness, not quite as good a film, though still good, kills the fish and smashes the kettle.

It’s three films in one, each with the same actors in different roles. In order they are The Death of R.M.F., R.M.F. is Flying and R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.

Please don’t ask me to explain the sandwich.

R.M.F. is played by the director’s old friend Yorgos Stefanakos, who is not an actor. He does not speak, so he’s not the main character. Or is he?

In the opener he’s a man driving a midnight blue BMW that corporate climber Robert (Jesse Plemons) is instructed to crash into by his boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe). Raymond runs Robert’s life minute by minute, down to his diet, the time he sleeps and wakes up, when he can make love to his wife and what he reads.

Robert does all of this willingly, including reading Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to a predetermined page every night.

Robert’s wife of 10 years, Sarah (Hong Chau), believes her husband should do whatever Raymond wants. They have no children. We learn more of how they became a couple. She’s particularly pleased with Raymond’s most recent gift to the household, a tennis racquet smashed by John McEnroe.

Raymond has another employee, Rita (Emma Stone), who is similarly sycophantic and bound to his each and every demand. Plemons, Dafoe and Stone are wonderful actors to watch. Stone won a deserved Oscar for Poor Things, in which Dafoe also has a leading role.

The second film involves a marine researcher (Stone) who is rescued after being lost at sea. However her police officer husband (Plemons) soon starts to think the person returned to him is not his wife. When he puts this to the test it reminds me of Roald Dahl at his cruellest.

Part three centres on a cult and two of its disciples (Stone and Plemons) on a road trip to locate a woman who can bring people back from the dead.

All they know is her height, weight and that she must be a twin whose sibling has died. They must find her to please the sexed-up cult leaders (Dafoe and Hau).

The silent R.M.F. appears in each film but in different guises. The other unifying theme is that a dream features each time, and the entire film does have a dreamlike/nightmare-like quality.

So what is this anthology about? Here’s my best guess: control and submission: one oppressively exercised, one a willing subjugation of free will. Workplace control, parental control as in Dogtooth (Dafoe is Stone’s father in the second film), sexual control, godlike control.

It’s about how people can choose a life lived not for themselves but for someone else. As there is little kindness in this film, the title may mean kind as type. How individuals amalgamate into the one type, always for the worst.

It’s a wonderfully acted (other cast members include Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn) absurdist drama that made me look away at times and laugh out loud at others. Wait for the police officer husband persuading his best friends, husband and wife, to put on a video of the two couples together.

Lanthimos is one of the most creative, bold, idiosyncratic risk-takers working in film today.

This new film is not one of his best but I watched it with admiration and pleasure and am in the camp that will be returning for the next one.

Kinds of Kindness (MA15+)

165 minutes
In cinemas

★★★½