The teaser for Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s latest collaboration since Oscar darling Poor Things, features a fast car, kissing, a whole lot of excitement.
“The moment of truth. This is it,” Stone says in a voiceover in the trailer as Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by The Eurythmics plays.
Kinds of Kindness also stars Poor Things alums Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley alongside Lanthimos’ The Favourite actor Joe Alwyn and Jesse Plemons (Killers of the Flower Moon, Power of the Dog). Other cast includes The Whale actress Hong Chau, Elemental actor Mamoudou Athie, and Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer.
What Is the Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone Movie Kinds of Kindness About?
Searchlight Pictures’ describes Kinds of Kindness as, “a triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.”
There’s a lot going on here. The trailer shows us the legs of someone being dragged through a doorway, someone else falling out of a wheeled chair, a boat speeding quickly through the water, a dog, an orange being juiced, and another shot of that purple car skidding around a motel parking lot.
For brief moments, we also get flashes of Dafoe, Qualley, Stone, Alwyn, Chau, Schafer, Plemons, and Athie.
But the only other dialogue in the trailer comes at the end, with Stone saying, “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Written by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, Kinds of Kindness is produced by Lanthimos, Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Katia Malian.
Earlier this month, Stone won the Oscar for best actress for her role as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. It was her second time winning best actress after 2016’s La La Land. Out of 10 nominations including for best picture and best director, Poor Things also took home the Oscars for best costume design, best makeup and hairstyling, and best production design.
Poor Things followed Stone as Baxter, an adult women who relearns how to do everything in life when mad scientist Godwin (Dafoe) replaces her brain with the brain of a baby.
At the 2019 Oscars, Olivia Colman won best actress for her role as Queen Anne in Lanthimos’ The Favourite. Stone, was nominated for best supporting actress for her role as Abigail, but the award went to Regina King for If Beale Street Could Talk. The Favourite followed Stone’s character as a new servant who arrives in Queen Anne’s court and upsets the balance in 18th-century England.
Lanthimos’ other films include 2009’s Dogtooth, about a father who tries to keep his adult children in a permanent state of childhood by tapping them in a compound; 2015’s The Lobster, which stars Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in a story about a dystopian future in which single people are forced to find a romantic partner in 45 days or they will be turned into animals and sent to live in the woods; and 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which stars Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan in a story about a surgeon whose life falls into a shambles as a teenage boy starts exhibiting frightening behavior.
Kinds of Kindness arrives in theaters on June 21.
You can watch the full teaser above.
Main Image: Emma Stone in Kinds of Kindness, Searchlight Pictures