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After the phenomenal Poor Things and The Favourite, two-time Academy Award winner Emma Stone reunites with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos in Kinds Of Kindness, an acerbic triptych about power, control and faith.

Across three separate but connected stories, we follow a businessman wrestling for control of his carefully curated life; a police officer alarmed by the strange return of his formerly lost-at-sea wife; and a singleminded woman determined to track down a gifted individual she believes is destined to become a spiritual leader.

"One of the most exciting things about these stories is that people find that it reflects what's going on within them," says Stone about the screenplay.

The film sees a reunion between Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou (who co-wrote Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer) and gives Kinds Of Kindness a similar off-kilter bite to it. The film places a peculiar cast of characters in the urban sprawl of an anonymous American city, each of whom are wrestling with desire, dogma and their internal darkness.

"A lot of Yorgos' work explores how people live their lives according to their own rules and those of society or a higher authority," says producer Andrew Lowe. "These themes are often taken to absurd (but darkly funny) heights and that is certainly the case in Kinds Of Kindness."

Joining Stone is an all-star cast, including past Lanthimos players Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn, and exciting Lanthimos newcomers Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau and Mamoudou Athie. Each plays various roles across the three stories, giving them a real chance to show their extraordinary versatility as actors. Not only is it a fantastic challenge for the filmmaker, but the cast all bring their wit, wisdom and wiles to an unpredictable set of wickedly entertaining fables. Dafoe says, "The story is Yorgos' very specific world and he has a gift for tricking you into seeing things that you can't normally see, and there's magic to that."

If you're in the market for some truly original, darkly comic filmmaking that will rattle around your mind long after you've left the cinema, Kinds Of Kindness is the answer.

It is a perfectly twisted slice of unique filmmaking from a modern master, joined by a cast you can't take your eyes off. Be warned, though – in typical Lanthimos fashion, the title Kinds Of Kindness might be worth taking with a grain of salt…  Hannah Strong

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