‘Kinds of Kindness’ review: Emma Stone stars in awful Oscar bait

There are so many supremely skilled actors in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film, “Kinds of Kindness.”

But about 15 minutes into the three-part, nearly-three-hour slog, I found myself whispering of Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe:

“Poor things…”  

Lanthimos’ past works, such as the Oscar-winning Stone vehicle “Poor Things,” “The Favourite” and “The Lobster,” were, to varying degrees, eccentric, sexy and smart. 

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The unbearably pretentious “Kinds of Kindness,” on the other hand, is a Euro-chic, albeit stylish, endurance test that will divide film buffs and outright appall mainstream audiences. I found it torturous.

Ask yourself this: Is a woman cutting off her finger and then pan-frying it for her husband to eat for dinner hilarious? 

The answer will determine your tolerance, or lack thereof, for “Kinds of Kindness.” 

Lanthimos’ self-indulgent freak show, which makes “The Lobster” look like “The Sound of Music,” is an anthology of three weird tales, featuring the same company of performers and told in a consistent, brittle monotone.

In the first, the ever-fascinating Plemons plays a man whose job is to do the extreme bidding of a mysterious boss (Dafoe). That could be gaining weight, reading “Anna Karenina” or getting hit by a car. The vignette is like watching paint dry, only less colorful. 

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Next, Plemons becomes a cop whose marine biologist wife (Stone) disappears during an expedition and returns home from an island acting strangely — jabbering on about how the place was ruled by talking dogs who forced her to eat chocolate. That leads him to deduce it’s not really her. 

Plenty of films and TV shows have tackled the body-swap story before, such as “Changeling” starring Angelina Jolie. But, gunning to be a hot topic, this version has foursome swinger sex and severed limbs.

In the last chapter, Stone and Plemons are members of a sex cult, Emily and Andrew, who have been tasked with finding a prophesied woman who can bring people back from the dead. 

Part Three is the most engaging, with an aura of “X-Files” to it, and has the triptych’s only sympathetic character: Stone’s Emily misses the husband (Joe Alwyn) and daughter whom she abandoned to go live in the Heaven’s Gate-like house.

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Still, the hour is once again childishly provocative. Thank God we’re not forced to see Dafoe and Plemons get it on behind closed doors.

The failed attempt at cleverness in Lanthimos’ movie is that nobody is actually kind here; they are inordinately cruel. There’s nothing wrong with that — so is Richard III — but these exploits are not particularly entertaining or profound, only random and repetitive. It’s a lot of unbelievable people doing preposterous or gross things for roughly 1/8 of a day.

The strong company actors all commit to the director’s bit.

In his trio of roles, Plemons is eerily calm, bringing to mind his creepy parts in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” and the “USS Callister” episode of “Black Mirror.” He’s great, if hampered by the annoying outlandishness all around him.   

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Stone doesn’t know how to quit Yorgos. Who can blame her? She won her second Oscar this year for playing a nymphomaniac science experiment in his “Poor Things.” But I’m starting to miss the old days when the actress played, um, people. 

Everybody — the cast also features Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley and others — behaves like particularly disturbed aliens from Neptune.

I’m not ready to kick Lanthimos to the curb just yet, but “Kinds of Kindness”? Not my “Favourite.”