Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos hasn’t made the world wait long for the follow-up to his engrossing and thought-provoking “Poor Things,” a nominee earlier this year for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Going into wide release this week, not quite seven months after “Poor Things” introduced the world to Emma Stone’s unforgettable Bella Baxter, the director’s intriguing, entrancing and, at times, confounding is said to have been shot quickly during the lengthy post-production phase of its visually elaborate predecessor. A “triptych fable,” “Kinds of Kindness” boasts many of the same actors — among them, not surprisingly, is Stone, who deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actress for “Poor Things” for her spectacular and fearless performance — playing different characters in its three stories.
To say this trio of tales is “loosely connected” is a bit generous, although Yorgos Stefanakos’ R.M.F.
is a titular figure — but also only so relevant narratively — in each. One would expect there to be a greater thematic thread tying together “The Death of R.M.
F.,” “R.M.
F. Is Flying” and “R.M.
F. Eats a Sandwich,” but, at least on initial viewing, that connective tissue is pretty thin. In each, at least one character is some degree of desperate to please at least one other character who is some degree of controlling — and, more often not, one of the latter figures is portrayed by fellow “Things” alum Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project�.