POLARISING PICTURE SHOW

PHOTO: COURTESY OF CANNES FILM FESTIVAL NAMRATA JOSHI HAT'S cinema if it doesn't incite extreme reactions in viewers? Cannes 2024 has had a fair share of such films, one of which predictably has been from the perennially unpredictable Yorgos Lanthimos of The Lobster, and Poor Things fame.

-  NAMRATA JOSHI

His new film, Kinds of Kindness, playing in the main competition section, has had people either raving or ranting; there are very few stationed in the middle ground.

The anthology film, comprising three different urban fables, has the same set of actors Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley among others-moving in and out of the varied scenarios and narratives and playing an eclectic set of characters. However, all are bound by one quality: extreme weirdness.

The first segment titled The Death of RMF kicks off to an electric start with Annie Lennox's song 'Sweet Dreams' and then abruptly takes us into a weird world where one man's life is controlled in all sorts of bizarre ways by another-be it his eating plan or the number of times he can make love or the gifts of a blue BMW, John McEnroe's smashed racquet or Ayrton Senna's scorched helmet, that are bestowed on him-or taken away at will.