The sounds of Eurhythmics appear early on in Yorgos Lanthimos’ anthology-film “Kinds of Kindness”, the seductive sounds of 1980s pop-perfection that serve as a complicated promise of the film to come. Lanthimos is a filmmaker who loves to unsettle and misdirect his audience, so those familiar with his work might already anticipate that the music might be a trick, except beyond the gyrating beats there doesn’t seem to be much hidden in the lyrics and their promise that: “Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?”.
The sheer abandon of the music is at odds with the repressed man we will soon meet. Robert Fletcher (Jesse Plemmons) is the kind of straitlaced and serious man who we would not imagine gyrating to British synth-pop. By the time we leave him, though, the songs’ observations on the kinds of people in the world feel potent: “Some of them want to use you, some of them want to get used by you…”