OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION
Four months, to the day, after the release of Poor creaturesYorgos Lanthimos finds himself in Cannes in competition with a new feature film, Kind of Kindnessa sketch film that the Greek filmmaker describes as “triptych fable”. For our part, we saw a story of three short stories which, each in their own way, present the same themes: authority, control, free will, emotional dependence and the desire to belong. Motifs that Lanthimos and his co-writer, Efthymis Filippou, knitted in tight stitches, tangled to the point of excess.
To this canvas, the filmmaker added a spicy sauce that we know well. A pinch of cruelty, a good dose of perversity, a touch of humor and a spurt of fresh blood. The dish is salty. Too much sometimes. The filmmaker does not always resist the strong use of an ingredient – gore if possible. No doubt about marking our territory and, at the same time, removing ourselves from the possible torpor to which we could give in.
A kind of strangeness
Let us recognize it nevertheless, Lanthimos achieves with Kind of Kindness a sober film (shot in panoramic format on film), closer to his beginnings than to his latest baroque compositions. Putting period costumes, ceremonial sets and manufactured monsters in the closet, the filmmaker seems to be taking a break between two heavy productions. And this time sheds (natural) light on a contemporary American society (rather well-off) whose inhabitants, despite an appearance similar to ours, nonetheless exude a kind of disturbing strangeness which would be enough to grant them the status of creatures .
These, although well crossed out all the same, cross three stories which intertwine and respond to each other, shifting and multiplying the points of view around couples and friendships whose cards are redistributed as the trials to which they are subjected.
The actors, whose permanence creates a sort of common thread, change characters from one story to another. The bonds that previously united them take on other forms, continue in wildfire, break according to the forces that direct them, the constraints that slow them down.
The good will of the master
A married man (Jesse Plemons), subject every morning to the orders of a boss (Willem Dafoe), obeys the finger and the eye. Eats and drinks what has been dictated to him, gains weight or loses weight, reads Anna Kareninamakes love to his wife (or not), knocks down a man in the street, according to the good will of the master from whom he will eventually free himself.
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