A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.

Yorgos Lanthimos has been a busy man recently, following up the critically acclaimed and award winning ‘Poor Things’ from earlier this year with ‘Kinds of Kindness’, an anthology movie that reunites him with ‘Poor Things’ stars Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe. Splitting the movie into three short story segments with the cast playing different characters in each story, the stories are linked by a man known as R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos) who features in each. I haven’t always liked Lanthimos’ previous movies, but I did love ‘Poor Things’ and with Emma Stone at the heart of things again I had fairly high hopes for ‘Kinds of Kindness’ – sadly high hopes that were not met by this movie which I really couldn’t get on board with.

In terms of the three short stories we have:

• ‘The Death of R.M.F.’ – the story of a man who is order by his employer to kill another man (R.M.F.) in a car crash
• ‘R.M.F. is Flying’ – the story of a man whose wife who has disappeared, magically reappears and behaves in an odd way, driving the man to become a loose cannon at his work as a police officer
• ‘R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich’ – the story of a cult and their quest to find a woman with the ability to reanimate the dead

Throughout these stories there is surreal humour, cannibalism, violence and lots of unusual sex, and I guess you could say there are moments where the absurdity of the humour made me laugh, but not often enough. It is nearly 3 hours long and it really did drag at times, despite the change of pace as it moves from one story segment to the next. Certainly the performances are good from a cast who are clearly enjoying the opportunity to play different characters within the same broad setting. I’ve ran out of superlatives for Emma Stone by this point and she is on form as per, but it’s Jesse Plemons who is the star of the show and he is really becoming an actor who is regularly one of the best things about anything he’s in. Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley and Hong Chau are also great in the supporting roles, and I’d have liked to have seen more of the talented Hunter Schafer, who is so great in the HBO TV series ‘Euphoria’.

‘Kinds of Kindness’ is Yorgos Lanthimos at his most weird and idiosyncratic and it didn’t work for me at all, but if you’re someone who likes his work as weird as it comes, and found ‘Poor Things’ a little too mainstream, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Rating: 2/5

Directed By: Yorgos Lanthimos

Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie, Joe Alwyn, Hunter Schafer and Yorgos Stefanakos

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt22408160/