The critics largely panned this, and I admit that it took me a while to get around to watching it for that reason, but… Lanthimos is Lanthimos, and when a best friend described her reaction to this as “flabbergasted” last week, I just had to watch it then and there. “Flabbergasted” was a perfect term.

I imagine that this project was hatched during the making of his last film. As he often does, he retained most of the actors from the hugely successful Poor Things, and went on to make Kinds of Kindness with them. I suspect there was a lot of input from this stellar cast, Emma Stone in particular (this is just me speculating…). Mark Ruffalo, who was brilliant in Poor Things, was swapped out for Jesse Plemons, who took it to a whole ‘nother level(s). “It girl” Margaret Qually graduated from bit part (Dafoe (as “God”)’s new experiment at the end of Poor Things) to powerhouse character(s).

One of our guests tonight had seen Kinds of Kindness before, and wanted to see it again, suspecting that a second watching would bring more focus. He was right.

In the meantime, I found this article that, aside from one minor inaccuracy*, explains a lot.

*The hair caught in the swimming pool pump was not one of the synchronized swimmer twins’.