Didn’t understand the movie? Kinds Of Kindness cast still loved making it with Yorgos Lanthimos

NEW YORK – Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his unconventional and provocative films – dark comedies exploring power dynamics and social norms, often through bizarre situations.

And the actors in his new movie, the satirical comedy-drama Kinds Of Kindness, say it is as strange and baffling as some of his previous work.

His last movie, the genre-bending fantasy Poor Things (2023), won Emma Stone a Best Actress Oscar for her role as a woman brought back to life by a mad scientist played by Willem Dafoe.

The American actress also appeared in The Favourite (2018), the period comedy that earned Lanthimos Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominations, winning Best Actress for Olivia Colman.

Stone and Dafoe have returned for Kinds Of Kindness, which is showing exclusively at The Projector.

With a runtime of 164 minutes, it is made up of three loosely connected stories: a man trying to take control of his fate; a wife who seems different after a supposed drowning; and a woman searching for a spiritual leader.

Stone and Dafoe – along with co-stars Jesse Plemons, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie – appear in all three but play different characters in each.

At a screening in New York earlier in 2024, Stone, 35, notes that this was the fourth time she has worked with Lanthimos, with whom she also made the experimental short film Bleat (2022).

“But we’d never (previously) shot anything that was set in the present day, and we’d never shot anything in America,” says the star, who nabbed her first Best Actress Oscar for the musical romance La La Land (2016).

Kinds Of Kindness was co-written by Lanthimos and 47-year-old Greek screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, his collaborator on the psychological dramas Dogtooth (2009) and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (2017), as well as absurdist comedy The Lobster (2015).

“So it felt like I got to be ensconced in the world that he created, and that I fell in love with, before we made The Favourite, because those films were, for the most part, written by him and Efthimis,” adds Stone.

But some of the actors working with the film-maker for the first time on this movie admit they do not completely understand what it is about.

British actor Alwyn, 33, who also appeared in The Favourite, says of the screenplay: “I’d never read anything like it before. I thought it was bonkers and brilliant – and I didn’t understand it. And I’m still (in the process of) understanding.”

Plemons felt the same.

“I thought it was brilliant and exciting and unlike anything I’d read,” says the 36-year-old American actor, who received an Oscar nomination for the psychological drama The Power Of The Dog (2021).

“It definitely runs you through a wide range of emotions when you read it, but you can’t quite comprehend why.”

Dafoe, however, never has problems understanding Lanthimos’ stories, partly because of the unique way the director works.

For instance, he makes actors rehearse and play games with one another before shooting begins.

“We play theatre and movement games, and he makes us all feel very comfortable with one another,” says Dafoe, the 69-year-old American actor who played the supervillain Green Goblin in the Spider-Man superhero films (2002 to 2021).

Lanthimos did the same when they shot Poor Things together, and the process helped Dafoe get to know the film-maker better.

“As we’re working on the film, he gives you a very precise world, and his taste, curiosities and ideas are very clear.

“He doesn’t always push for a result, and it’s a nice way to do it because it feels very organic, and like you’re doing things in the interest of a flow,” says Dafoe, a four-time Oscar nominee for roles in films such as war drama Platoon (1986) and the Vincent van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate (2018).

“And the material is so rich that if you really give yourself to it, you kind of can’t go wrong,” the veteran adds.

“So all this talk about understanding (the movie) – it’s never a problem for me as long as I’m making a relationship to what I’m doing and having an experience. It’s important to remember that.”