Yorgos Lanthimos is not here to comfort you. Kinds of Kindness is a cinematic perversion, dressed in politeness but dripping in submission, sexual domination, and the twisted ecstasy of obedience. Forget tenderness—this film dissects the human need to be owned, to be told, to be used. And in doing so, it flays open our deepest desires and exposes the rot beneath our rituals of “kindness.”
The Flesh of Obedience
Jesse Plemons delivers a haunting performance as a man shackled not by chains, but by devotion. In the first tale, he is a corporate puppet—his very movements dictated by a man who rewrites his morality, his intimacy, his very sense of being. There’s a sex scene where the act is more ritual than romance. No passion, only duty. And it’s in this chilling absence of desire that the film becomes dangerously erotic. Obedience becomes foreplay. Control becomes climax.
Desire Drenched in Desperation
The second segment spirals into the grotesque obsession of a man trying to resurrect his dead wife. But what he truly craves isn’t reunion—it’s the power to mold love in his image. Emma Stone returns not as herself, but as a vessel, a fantasy reconstructed. Their reunion isn’t romantic—it’s clinical, skin-deep, as if her flesh exists only for his grief to violate. Their sexual chemistry is electric, but it burns with the heat of loneliness, not love.
The Cult of Carnal Salvation
In the final story, we enter the territory of spiritual possession through sexual sacrifice. A cult believes in salvation through submission, and the female body becomes a sacred weapon. Stone again becomes an object of both worship and exploitation, shedding not just her clothes but her agency. The scenes are hypnotic, erotic, terrifying. Each touch is a command. Each moan, a surrender.
Kinds of Kindness is not a film. It is a confession. A whisper in your ear at midnight asking, “What are you willing to become for someone to love you?”
Kindness here is not love. It is consent without desire. Obedience without understanding. Sex without pleasure. And in every frame, Lanthimos dares you to watch… and admit that you’re aroused.
This is cinema stripped bare—body, mind, and soul.
