The first Friday of summer in 2024 brings interesting titles to the Aragonese billboard. In addition to Kevin Costner’s return to the West with ‘Horizon’ or the Spanish comedy full of drama ‘House on Fire’, the great attraction for moviegoers is the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos, ‘Kinds of kindness’, again starring Emma Stone.
‘Kinds of kindness’
He repeats part of the cast – there are Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe or Margaret Qualley – from ‘Poor Creatures’, but in ‘Kinds of kindness’ there is hardly any glimpse of the magnetism of his previous film. On the contrary, the film, which arrives this Friday in cinemas with the title in English (something like ‘Types of kindness’ or ‘Types of goodness’), brings together three different fables that, from different coordinates and always with a delicious touch between fantastic and surreal, They address issues such as toxic relationships, control or submission, through a gallery of one-dimensional characters, who connect with the cruelty and sarcasm that oozes much of the work of the subversive Greek filmmaker. Not in vain, Lanthimos once again collaborates in writing the script with Efthimis Filippou, with whom he has already worked on titles such as ‘Canino’ (2009), ‘Alps’ (2011), ‘Lobster’ (2015) or ‘The Sacrifice of a sacred deer’ (2017).
With a complete duration of 2 hours and 44 minutes, as in any anthology, each story has its strengths and weaknesses, the most rounded of them being the first, titled ‘The Death of RFM’. RFM are the initials, precisely, of a completely secondary character who serves as an anchor for the entire set, since he is the only one who appears in the three stories, despite the fact that the different characters that swarm through them are played by the same group of actors and actresses. This first episode describes a relationship of authority, control and distressing submission and impossible between Raymond (Willem Dafoe), the owner of a construction company, and Richard (Jesse Plemons), one of the architects under his charge.
Soon the viewer will understand that it goes far beyond what is strictly work. Richard eats, drinks, fucks and behaves just as Raymond demands, and an uncomfortable laugh takes over the viewer, who cannot believe what is happening on screen. But the rope tightens when Richard, who longs to regain control of his life, refuses to carry out his boss’s latest imposition. It is then that the teacher gives the letter of freedom to the disciple and he, without handles, is lost. Things will get even more interesting when, already out of his mind, he meets Rita (Emma Stone), a young woman who does seem willing to follow Raymond’s instructions to the last consequences. It is an uncomfortable, tense and terrifying episode, with Dafoe and Plemons exceptional, and a certainly bitter aftertaste.
The second one, ‘RFM is flying’, seems to have more pacing problems. In it, Dafoe plays the father of Liz (Stone), a young woman who has disappeared while working on her boat with her biologist colleagues. Her husband Daniel (Plemons) is a police officer who has never been the same since. Everything reminds him of her and he even treats the suspects with the care and affection that he treated Liz. At a dinner with another couple of friends, he insists that they watch a video together to remember her, in one of the wildest and funniest jokes in a story that changes when the wife returns and the plot approaches a classic like ‘The Invasion of the body snatchers’. Her goodness, love and kindness collide head-on with his delusions.
This triptych concludes with the episode ‘RFM eats a sandwich’. On this occasion, Plemons and Stone play Andrew and Emily, a couple without emotional ties who, from within a sect led by Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Hong Chau), He dedicates his efforts to finding a woman capable of reviving the dead. Only the almost constant reminder of her past family life – she abandoned her husband and daughter – will stand in the way of Emily achieving all her goals. It is an interesting chapter, with an ending that is pure enjoyment, after the almost unhealthy obsession that its protagonist has shown, but by then it is possible that the viewer is already defeated.
In short, ‘Kinds of kindness’ is a rather irregular ensemble that will not go beyond an anecdote in the director’s otherwise interesting career.
‘Horizon’
Kevin Costner revealed in Cannes that he had mortgaged his four houses to finance ‘Horizon’, a chronicle about the conquest of the American West divided into four installments – the first is now being released – and which he has directed, co-written and starred in alongside Sienna Miller.
Costner returns to direct for the first time since ‘Open Range’ (2003) and revisits the America of ‘Dances with Wolves’, his box office success and directorial debut in 1990. The second episode will premiere in August.
‘Burning house’
Director Dani de la Orden explores the contradictions of “a family that does not know how to love each other” in his film ‘Casa en llamas’, an ensemble comedy-drama that features Emma Vilarasau, Enric Auquer, Macarena García and Alberto San Juan in its cast. among others.
Vilarasau is the matriarch of a bourgeois family that has been scattered for some time, But they meet for a special occasion at the summer house in Cadaqués (Girona), where all kinds of tensions and secrets will surface.
‘Detective Conan’
Directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa, ‘Detective Conan: million dollar pentagram’ is based on one of the stories from the popular manga series by Gosho Aoyama and it was the highest-grossing film in the year of its release in Japan.
Japan’s most famous detective finds himself facing a new case when a huge explosion occurs at a crowded fair held in a new tourist complex in Tokyo.
‘Shayda’
With Cate Blanchett as producer and Zar Amir Ebrahimi as star, ‘Shayda’ It is the debut film of the Iranian Noora Niasari and is based on his childhood experiences.
The film, winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of an Iranian refugee woman in a shelter for battered women in Australia, with her daughter Mona, 6 years old, after fleeing her husband and filing for divorce.
