Willem Dafoe couldn’t help but get back to play in Yorgos Lanthimos’ surreal, often brutal but beautiful playground in “Kinds of Kindness.”
Fresh off his paternal twist on a Frankenstein-esque mad scientist in awards darling “Poor Things,” Dafoe reunites with the arthouse auteur alongside Emma Stone for this new three-part film, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.
Starring with Stone, Jesse Plemons and Margaret Qualley in an at-times gnarly script by Lanthimos and his former “The Lobster,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “Dogtooth” collaborator Efthimis Filippou, Dafoe embodies three men of varying degrees of intensity across the three parts of “Kinds of Kindness.”