I sometimes found Yorgos Lanthimos’ early films such as “Dogtooth” (2009) a bit too dry and vicious for me, and his latest film “Kinds of Kindness”, which is currently available on Disney+ in South Korea, shows him back in his good old nasty mode in a rather self-indulgent way. While it surely strikes us hard with sudden moments of absurd violence from time to time, the movie also feels overlong and excessive at times during its 164-minute running time, and it is not even helped that much by its triptych narrative structure.

The movie consists of three different stories vaguely connected to each other by a certain minor figure named “R.M.F”. At the beginning of the first story, “The Death of R.M.F.”, we see this figure coming to a big house where he gets paid for doing something later, and we soon come to see what he is exactly required to do for that.

Around that narrative point, we are introduced to a guy named Robert (Jesse Plemons), who is the actual hero of the first story. At first, he seems to have everything he wants for his life on the surface, but then it is gradually revealed that he is thoroughly controlled by his eccentric boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe) everyday in exchange for his affluent suburban life. Day by day, Robert must follow every instruction from his boss, and he has had no problem with that during last several years, but then, what do you know, there eventually comes a point where he becomes quite conflicted when his boss demands to do something quite unethical to say the least.

What follows next is how Robert struggles to handle the absurd consequence from his refusal to follow that certain demand of his boss. Inevitably coming to realize that he actually prefers to be under constant control to being totally free, Robert desperately tries to regain his former position, but, of course, there is a big price for that, and the movie certainly has some naughty fun with how far he is willing to go.

In case of the second story, “R.M.F. is Flying”, it starts with how things have been gloomy from a young police officer named Daniel (Jesse Plemons). His wife Liz (Emma Stone) was recently gone missing at sea along with several colleagues of hers, and it is quite possible to him that he will have to prepare for the worst scenario. While his colleague/best friend Will (Mamoudou Athie) tries his best for providing some emotional support, Daniel still finds himself brooding over the possibility of his wife’s death, and this certainly affects his work a lot.

And then his wife is eventually found, but Daniel only comes to have a rather morbid delusion instead of being delighted by her miraculous return. He suspects that she is an impostor, and the situation becomes more disturbing when his sudden paranoid gets worse day by day. Jesse Plemons, who received the Best Actor award when the movie was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival early in this year, is quite effective as slowly dialing up his character’s madness along the plot, and Emma Stone, who was absolutely stunning in her Oscar-winning performance in Lanthimos’ previous film “Poor Things” (2023), is also convincing while never overshadowing Plemons’ excellent acting.

Compared to the first two stories, the third story, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” is more glacial and distant in comparison. At first, we are introduced to Emily (Emma Stone) and Andrew (Jesse Plemons), the two young members of an odd religious cult who have been looking for someone very special according to their charismatic leader. After their another failure, Emily and Andrew go back to their headquarters, and we get some glimpses of how strange and absurd their religious belief really is.

Anyway, after getting thrown out the group due to her unfortunate night with her ex-husband, Emily meets Rebecca (Margaret Qualley), a young woman who previously approached to Emily and Andrew and claimed that her twin sister is the one they are looking for. Although she did not believe Rebecca at that time, Emily comes to see that Rebecca’s twin sister may help her get back in the group, and we are served with several extreme moments as Emily finds herself going much further than expected for her desperate goal.

However, the story fails to develop its broad characters more for engaging us, and so are the other two stories, which are a bit more amusing but mostly end up scratching the surface. At least, the screenplay by Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthimis Filippou, who previously collaborated with Lanthimos in “The Lobster” (2015) and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017), provides heaps of stuffs to play for Plemons, Stone, and several other cast members, who surely have some ball with their nasty and absurd materials. Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, both of whom also incidentally appeared in “Poor Things”, are clearly savoring every moment of theirs, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau, and Mamoudou Athie also have each own moment to shine.

In conclusion, “Kinds of Kindness” is a letdown considering how much Lanthimos achieved in “Poor Things” and “The Favourite” (2018), but it has some distinctive touches which will remind you again of why he is one of the most interesting filmmakers of our time. As a matter of fact, he is already ready to move onto the next project at present, and I sincerely hope that his next film will be more controlled and interesting compared to this indulgent exercise in style.