Alicia García de Francisco |
Madrid (EFE).- Inspired by Caligula, the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos has created a disturbing film in ‘Kind of Kindness’, again with Emma Stone, although the director laughs at this observation: “Disturbing? “I reflect the things I observe in the world.”
Lanthimos looks closely at human beings, how they interact and what human relationships are like. “And a lot of that is disturbing,” he says with a smile in an interview with EFE after the presentation at the Cannes Film Festival of a film for which Jesse Plemons won the award for best actor and which opens in theaters this Friday. Spanish.
“I don’t want to run away from it but I don’t want to upset the audience on purpose. I just want them to get involved with the film,” explains the director about ‘Kind of Kindness’.
Three stories that relate
Three independent but related stories about how far humans can go, a theme he has already explored in some of his most complex films, such as ‘Dogtooth’ (2009), ‘Lobster’ (2015) or ‘The Sacrifice of a Sacred Deer’ (2017).
After releasing ‘The Favourite’ (2018) and ‘Poor Creatures’ (2023), both with Emma Stone – who won the Oscar for best actress for her work in the second – Lanthimos has once again collaborated with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou to write ‘Kind of Kindness’, which also features Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley.
They are the protagonists of the three stories and in each one they play a different character.
In the first, an executive (Plemons) dominated down to the smallest detail by his boss (Dafoe) tries to regain his freedom; the second is about a policeman (Plemons) who awaits the return of his missing wife (Stone); and the third a woman (Stone) searches for meaning in her life in a cult.
Ideas that are based on this observation of human relationships and social structures, which allow Lanthimos to explore the interior of people to make viewers “wonder and think certain things.”
A contemporary Caligula
For the first story he was inspired by reading the story of Caligula, an emperor with unlimited power, and thought about what such a character would be like in contemporary society.
While the sect’s idea came from something he had heard years ago about people who think a new messiah is coming. “That stuck in my mind and I wanted to do something about that idea,” that of blind faith or the lack of it.
Examples of how his mind works. “I could start from anywhere and then that idea becomes a story that I want to tell so that other people can interact with it,” explains the director, who has just returned to his native Athens after living for several years in London.
Neither his stay in the United Kingdom nor the awards he won with ‘Poor Creatures’ – four Oscars, five BAFTAs or two Golden Globes – have made him change his style or his stories, always with a marked dark, disturbing and challenging tone.
creative freedom
At the presentation of ‘Kind of Kindness’ in Cannes, he assured that his only objective is to maintain his creative freedom, something that helps him to work with people he trusts, as is the case of Emma Stone, who assured that the director is his muse.
Lanthimos admits to having a “very special” connection with the American actress, which allows them to “trust each other a lot”, be very sincere and “discuss any subject without any fear”.
It allows them to “explore things and feel safe with each other and know that whatever we give each other, we’re going to handle it the best way we can and then we can just try to do something.”
Such is the trust with Stone that they will work together for the fourth time in ‘Bugonia’, which they will begin filming in December, also with Plemons, and which is a new version of ‘Save Planet Earth’, a 2003 science fiction comedy from South Korean Jang Joon-hwan.
And once again he will explore the limits of the human being that he is so obsessed with. And what are yours?: “I have to do exhaustive tests to find them,” he says, amused.
