Cannes: Yorgos Lanthimos-Emma Stone Reunion ‘Kinds of Kindness’ Premieres to 4-Minute Standing Ovation

Emma Stone in ‘Kinds of Kindness’

Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Yorgos Lanthimos revealed his particular brand of niceness as the Cannes Film Festival presented the world premiere of his twisted Kinds of Kindness on Friday night.

The film, which reunites The Favourite and Poor Things director Lanthimos and star Emma Stone, was greeted with a 4-minute ovation inside the packed Grand Lumiere Theatre. As far as Cannes ovations go, that’s on the short end of the spectrum (Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis clocked in at 10 minutes Thursday night, while at Venice last year, Lanthimos’ Poor Things received minutes of cheers). Still, basking in the applause were Lanthimos and Stone, fellow Poor Things alums Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley, plus Jesse Plemons, Mamoudou Athie, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn and Hunter Schafer. Others in attendance including Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Nomadland filmmaker Chloe Zhao and Ukrainian 20 days in Mariupol documentarian Mstyslav Chernov.

Searchlight will release the $15 million film, a three-part anthology co-written by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, in the U.S. on June 21.

Few details about the plot had surfaced prior to Friday’s premiere. Lanthimos helmed Kinds of Kindness from a script he co-wrote with Efthimis Filippou, who worked with the director on the screenplays for four previous films, 2015’s The Lobster and 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer. During a British Film Institute event in January, Lanthimos teased what audiences could expect. “It’s three different stories, and we’re finishing the edit right now, and I still can’t tell you exactly what it is about,” he said at the time. “But I also wouldn’t want to tell you what I thought the stories are about because it just makes it so small.”

In an interview published this week, Dafoe told The Hollywood Reporter that the experience of making an anthology felt like making three separate movies. “It’s a very interesting film and I’m eager to see it again. [Lanthimos] makes stories where, for an actor, he gives you interesting things to do that maybe turn on certain situations or approach certain emotions, but they’re certainly not recognizable. As an audience member, when I watch his work, I feel that he transposes things. You have these feelings, but you don’t recognize the story — so you have new insights. You’re freed from conditioning. I find his work really stimulating and challenging — and fun.

This year’s Cannes Film Festival marks yet another chapter in the South of France for the Greek auteur. He broke out here in 2009 with his second feature film, Dogtooth, which won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 62nd annual event. He came back to the Croisette with his first English language film, The Lobster, which landed a competition slot and ended its festival run with a jury prize. He was back again for the 70th edition with The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which earned a best screenplay prize. Lanthimos also served as a member of the jury in 2019.