I'd watched Yorgos's Criterion Closet picks, some of which were fairly predictable, e.g. Inland Empire, Buñuel ('my favourite filmmaker'), less so Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky ('raw, crazy and intense', which he used as reference for Emma Stone for Bugonia) or Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge. He was excited to pick up a copy of Black God, White Devil and remembered seeing Persona in Bergman's theatre in Faro.
So Phantom of Liberty was something of an inspiration for Kinds of Kindness, not so much the film but the structure, and I realised as we (just) still had Disney+ I should watch it.
An unfortunate decision, perhaps. Because despite a sterling cast (boy does Emma love Yorgos) it's more reminiscent of his early, weird and somehow unpleasant films like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. And is two and three quarter hours, to boot.
In story #1, Jesse Plemons does literally everything his boss and father figure Willem Defoe tells him - but he draws a line at murder and is rejected. (He's even contraceptized his wife so they won't have children.)
In #2, his wife Emma Stone has gone missing. She returns home but he thinks she's someone else, gets her to to cut off her thumb for him to eat, you know the sort of thing. I did laugh when cop Jesse shoots an innocent man in the hand and then tries to lick the blood. I don't know what that had to do with the plot but it was funny.
And in #3, some crazy dystopia where Emma and Jesse are searching for a special woman who can bring the dead back to life, while some kind of contagion spreads. Despite being infected by her ex husband, Emma finds such a woman (two more of Margaret Qualley's incarnations) but smashes her through her windscreen (by accident), which is also kind of funny. (Qualley also deliberately diving into an empty swimming pool also blackly funny.)
The other recurring characters are Hong Chao and Mamoudou Athie.
It is gorgeously shot by Robbie Ryan and the far out music is by Jerskin Fendrix (I think this is supposed to be funny too, but I'm not sure).
I prefer to think of it as Yorgos Lanthimos's Twilight Zone. As usual I have no idea what they were about.
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