The balance between wanting to be “loved and accepted and controlled and wanting to be free” is at the center of the universe in “Kinds of Kindness.” That’s according to star Emma Stone, who plays three roles in the latest movie directed by Academy Award nominee Yorgos Lanthimos. Searchlight Pictures opens “Kinds of Kindness” on Friday, June 21, and ahead of the premiere, watch an IndieWire exclusive featurette going behind the scenes of the film in the video above.
Along with Stone, the film also stars Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Hunter Schafer, Mamoudou Athie, and Margaret Qualley. “Kinds of Kindness” tells three stories of cultlike abuses of power and control, with the actors playing different roles that all ruminate on the same themes throughout. Plemons recently said he felt “sick to his stomach” reading the screenplay, which features the usual bleak and perverse comedy from Lanthimos, this time reuniting with his “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” screenwriter Efthimis Filippou. Lanthimos and his collaborator previously received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for “The Lobster.”
Lanthimos shot the movie while four-time Oscar winner “Poor Things” was in post-production on VFX. “It was meaningful to him after we made ‘Poor Things,’ five years after we made “The Favourite,’” Stone recently said to IndieWire of her now-many collaborations with Lanthimos. “And he had taken a break that whole time. He hadn’t made a film in between. So this was nine months after we shot ‘Poor Things.’ To be back in this world with Efthymis and a world of his own, there was a sense of joy in that for him and consequently, for all of us. But it’s heavy themes and situations going on. So it’s definitely not a cakewalk. Except for the dance part, which I thought was great. That was just fun.”
“Even though his films have such traumatic things, there’s a certain sense of humor throughout all of it,” Chau says in the video. Watch it above.
