In a just world, I should just be able to tell you that Kinds of Kindness is the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos and his mise, Emma Stone, and you would line up to buy tickets. They’ve done The Favourite together, and took the awards season by storm last year with Poor Things, for which Stone won her second Best Actress Oscar. Any collaboration should be on your radar. But this is 2024, and potential audience members need teasers and trailers, so fine… here you go. It looks amazing!
This is the ideal type of teaser. It gives us a hint of what Kinds of Kindness might be, without spoiling much of anything. And just based on the images alone, we can tell this is something totally different from the fantasy/sci-fi/horror world of Bella Baxter and her sojourn into the real world as part of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. Everything about Poor Things was hyper-stylized, from the costumes and sets to even the dialogue and performance. It led to the movie becoming one of the best Emma Stone movies ever made. As of right now, Kinds of Kindness looks more like a Coen Brothers crime thriller, though even that might be deceiving.
WIth the trailer came a press release that tells us this much about the plot:
KINDS OF KINDNESS is a triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
Sure, that works! And it primarily works because that cast looks exquisite. As you see in the teaser, Yorgos Lanthimos has recruited Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer for Kinds of Kindness. Now, can someone tell me what Hong Chao is licking in this scene?
The best part about this trailer isn’t the cast, it’s the release date. Kinds of Kindness will be reaching theaters on June 21, with several film critics on social media predicting (wisely) that the movie will have a splashy premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Safe bet. Could it be possible that Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone are back in the awards conversation next year? Or is this a system purge for them, a palette cleanser that allows them to let their hair down and just have fun with a genre exercise? They’ve certainly earned the right to do whatever they want, and I know I’ll be there front and center to see the results.
