KINDS OF KINDNESS — CANNES 2024

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Theater of Cruelty

Yorgos Lanthamos Regresses

By Cole Smithey

Since going mainstream with the shockingly delightful "Poor Things," the heir-apparent to such Cinema heavyweights as Michael Haneke, Peter Greenaway, David Cronenberg, and David Lynch, serves up a half-baked mess.

Unintelligible.

Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthamos re-teams with regular co-writer Efthimis Filippou to create a triptych of stories, each one more morose than the last.

It's the same poorly articulated breed of satire that hobbled other Lanthamos/Filippou projects — see, or rather don't see: "Dogtooth," "Alps," "The Lobster," and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer."

Here is feel-bad Cinema for the masses.

Pointless misery.

Eat up babies.

In "Kinds of Kindness," the viewer is left to their own devices to extrapolate on narcissist bosses, trigger-happy cops, group sex with friends, health cults, and, well yes, cannibalism. Rape and incest also get the Lanthamos spotlight.

If you are going to punish your audience, there ought to be a good reason for it. You will find no such purpose in "Kinds of Kindness" unless you are willing to put yourself through days of mental gymnastics.

The concept for the movie seems to spring from the Annie Lennox/Dave Stewart song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," that introduces the movie.

BDS&M misery.

It is telling that Lanthamos's most successful film "Poor Things" was written by other writers, namely Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray.

Telling too, is Filippou's explanation of "Kinds of Kindness."

"Our main concern is to observe people, behaviors, clothes, and reactions and create a story that relates to something almost real and relatively believable."

How vague can you get?

I dare say that this particular approach will never lead to the narrative heights that David Lynch reached with "Blue Velvet" or "Mulholland Drive," much less Lars von Trier's challenging high-wire act.

Lanthamos flagrantly disregards one of Cinema's strongest precepts, namely that the filmmaker is responsible for sustaining an audience's trust. One reason that Alfred Hitchcock's movies are so good is due to the way Hitch treats his audience. You know that you are in capable hands.

If he were a doctor, Yorgos Lanthamos might, for example, want to amputate your thumb just to see your reaction. Fun for him perhaps, but not for you.

Rated R. 164 mins.ZERO STARS

WORKING GIRLS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Lizzie Borden's third film, behind "Regrouping" (1979) and "Born In Flames" (1983), is a perfect chamber-piece of neo-realist social satire.

The film's feminist trappings of an '80s era Manhattan brothel provides the frame for a piercing commentary on the effects of American capitalism on women.

"Working Girls" could easily be adapted to be a modernday Broadway play.

It would be a sensation for its timeless qualities of social, sexual, and economic truth.

Molly (Louise Smith), a professional photographer, lives with her lesbian girlfriend when she isn't working as a sex worker in a Manhattan brothel run by a domineering madam.

"Have you ever heard of surplus value?"

That theme line shoots like a sharp political dart when a character speaks it.

“All workers create more value at work than they receive in wages. The extra surplus value goes into the boss’s pocket as profit.”

Surplus value is "the surplus produced over and above what is required to survive, which is translated into profit in capitalism. Since the capitalist pays a laborer for his/her labor, the capitalist claims to own the means of production, the worker's labor-power, and even the product that is thus produced."

Female hands hold cups of coffee, count money, and remove cum-filled condoms.

Everyone chisels; there is no place to hide.

Not Rated. 93 mins.

POOR THINGS

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel. Punk heart still beating.

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When I met Yorgos Lanthimos at the Fox Searchlight party for his film "The Favourite," I told him that I thought that film fell short of being as bawdy as it should have been, that he needed to lean into being much bawdier with his movies. Yorgos seems to have followed my advice.

Working from a novel by Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray, and with artistic input from the film's lead actress Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos presents a captivating journey of self-discovery that necessarily involves sex, lots and lots of sex.

Oh how refreshing to see characters fucking, rather than shooting each other.

"Poor Things" coincides with Emerld Fennell's "Saltburn" in confronting Hollywood's gun-happy format with something considerably more grounded, namely the sex urge that drives people, and the social curiosity that comes along with it.

Rapturous in its outrageous designs, "Poor Things" is a wonder to behold and a balm for the soul.

Emma Stone is fearless. Willem Dafoe is exquisite, as he always is. Mark Ruffalo provides the comic timing.

Brilliant social satire arrives in spades with a movie that you may want to watch a few times, for obvious reasons.

The not-so-obvious reasons are good too.

Rated R. 141 mins.