Kinds of Kindness dives deep into different concepts of cruelty, power, love, and kindness by structuring it as a triptych fable.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Kinds of Kindness showcases three stories where the same cast of actors led by Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Willem Dafoe play different characters as it explores unique circumstances of how one person's persistent need for approval leads to drastic results.
Kinds of Kindness premiered in U.S. theaters on June 21 and it is now available to stream on Hulu.
Kinds of Kindness: The Three Stories Explained
The Death of R.M.F
The first story centers around Robert (Jesse Plemons) who appears to be following a strict schedule and routine crafted by his boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe).
At first glance, Robert looks as though he is a normal married guy who goes to work every day. However, he is a far more complicated man due to Raymond's controlling personality.
It is revealed that Raymond has pretty much orchestrated a good chunk of his life to satisfy him. The dynamic between Raymond and Robert is not typical of boss-employee interplay, considering that sexual tension and violence are involved.
Raymond's manipulative nature is showcased throughout the story as he uses it as a weapon to lure Robert, Rita (Emma Stone), and even his wife, Vivian (Margaret Qualley) to do what he wants in exchange for a different kind of satisfaction.
At one point, it is revealed that Raymond handpicked Sarah (Hong Chau) as Robert's wife and he even pulled strings behind the scenes so that she would not end up pregnant.
Things take a turn, though, after one of Raymond's requests for Robert involves killing a man (with his consent) named R.M.F.
While Robert does try to fulfill his boss' wishes, he ultimately fails since his conscience gets the best of him. This also serves as a wake-up call for him since he started to refuse to obey Raymond's wishes after the incident, leading him to quit his job.
This started a domino effect where he also lost his wife and his sense of life. Without Raymond, Robert has lost direction on how to live his life and his unwavering loyalty to his boss serves as his anchor to keep going.
Robert later meets Rita, who is revealed to be his replacement. She is also assigned by Raymond to do what Robert was not able to do (to kill R.M.F.) but she fails.
In an attempt to bring back Raymond to his life, Robert uses her connection to Rita to get ahold of RMF's body inside the hospital and finishes the job by running him over with his car multiple times, effectively killing him.
Robert's act of desperation is more than enough to impress Raymond, bringing him back to his life.
R.M.F. Is Flying
The second story focuses on a police officer named Daniel (Plemons) as he is reeling from the fact that his wife, Liz (Stone), is missing after being lost at sea.
However, one day, Liz returns, but Daniel refuses to believe that she is his wife. It even comes to a point that Daniel wants her to move out, ultimately leading to a mental breakdown that effectively suspends him from work.
Daniel believes that his wife was replaced by a doppelganger when she was trapped on an island, mainly because their cat doesn't recognize her, and she has her own dog tag even though he still has hers in his possession.
His delusion gets worse as the story progresses since he forces Liz to make him meals out of her body parts so that he can eat. His requests grow from Liz's thumb to her liver, with the latter ultimately causing her death.
After Liz dies, another version of Liz (who is presumed by many as either the original one or just an illusion) knocks at the door and kisses Daniel, seemingly reuniting the pair and cementing the idea that the first Liz is an impostor.
In R.M.F. Is Flying's ending, it is not made clear who truly is the impostor or if Daniel has imagined things all this time.
It is worth noting that the first Liz was pregnant before she died and she suffered a miscarriage after Daniel hit her.
Daniel's delusional left may be simply hiding the fact that he abused his actual wife and it is anchored by his guilt. He also cannot accept the idea that Liz has changed ever since she went missing and he wants to see his wife as the past version (aka his idealized image of Liz).
R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich
In the final story, Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) are members of a sex cult desperate to find a woman who can miraculously bring back anyone from the dead.
The leaders of the sex cult are named AKA (Chau) and OMI (Dafoe) and they have unwaveringly loyal members who will do anything to please them.
AKA and OMI use a unique (yet weird) way of determining whether their members are contaminated or not by licking the sweat off their bodies.
According to their rules, one can get contaminated if their members have sex with someone who is not part of their group.
At the center of the story is Emily who has conflicted feelings about visiting her daughter and husband over her so-called divine purpose of finding the girl whom she saw in her dreams who can revive the dead.
Emily's attachment to her daughter comes back to bite her though after her lonely and sadistic husband, Joseph (Joe Alwyn), rapes her one night which makes her contaminated in sex cult terms.
As a result, OMI and AKA banish Emily from the sex cult, but this doesn't stop her from fulfilling their wishes to try and get back to the group.
Emily uses her connections to find twins Ruby and Rebecca (played both by Margaret Qually) and she assumes that one of them is the woman who can bring back the dead.
To fulfill the prophecy, Rebecca kills herself as her twisted way of sacrifice to prove that her twin is the "savior."
Emily goes to great lengths to become close to Ruby (who is a veterinarian) and, at one point, she even harms a dog to do so.
Emily knocks Ruby out with some tranquilizers and brings her to a morgue to check her theory if she can revive the dead.
In a surprising turn of events, Ruby revives R.M.F., allowing Emily to celebrate with an energetic dance outside the hospital.
However, the movie ends with Ruby's death after Emily gets distracted while driving.
Kind of Kindness' True Meaning Explained
The three stories of Kinds of Kindness depict what someone is capable of doing to gain the approval of anyone. It is a thorough exploration of control, sacrifice, and power (may it be corrupt or not).
In the three stories presented, the common denominator is that the protagonists are involved in a cruel relationship and subjected to kindness masked as abuse.
These characters are on an endless pursuit of acceptance and happiness and they will do anything to get it even if it sacrifices their freedom, morality, or sanity.
It cements the idea that these individuals are trapped in toxic relationships that they can't get out of since they will lose their overall direction in life if they break free, namely how Robert needs Raymond, Emily's persistence toward the cult, and Liz's consistent masking of Daniel's abusive self.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter fresh off his win as best actor for the film at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Jesse Plemons admitted that he "[doesn't] think there's a wrong interpretation of the movie:"
"I don’t think there’s a wrong interpretation. And that’s what is exciting and interesting to me about this movie. Like I said, it changed for me even throughout the course of shooting. Even just looking at one of the three films, I’d be like: 'OK, I know what this is now.' And then two days later, I’d think, 'No, actually, it’s all of these other things.'"
Plemons continued by pointing out that the movie dives into the things that we, as individuals, are brought up and conditioned to accept in our lifetime, noting that Kinds of Kindness dealt with these aspects "in a really roundabout and unusual way:"
"Obviously, the themes he’s dealing with in a very general sense are: control, relationships, institutions, and things we’re brought up and conditioned just to accept and not to question. These constructs or institutions are supposed to make us feel safe and secure — or in the case of the religious one, to lead us to some form of transcendence. They’re all, in a nutshell, very simple but very human themes. We’ve just dealt with them in a really roundabout and unusual way. But in my mind, it’s all very universal."
As a whole, all three stories are just pieces of the grand scheme of life and it wouldn't be surprising if a semblance of the characters' dynamics happened in real life.
The ending of each story sheds light on the risks of staying in an abusive relationship (romantic or not) which could often lead to an unending and destructive cycle.
Kinds of Kindness is now streaming on Hulu.
