CANNES, France (AP) â Before a journalist has even lobbed a question, and spit out a string of overlapping answers.
âWe have a great relationship,â begins Lanthimos. ââWe just love working together,â adds Stone. âIt was cool to do a modern-day piece.â âGoing back to some of the early stuff,â says Lanthimos. âA throwback,â says Stone. âOur relationship has evolved over time,â Lanthimos adds.
âTotally,â says Stone.
Stone and Lanthimos have by now honed their patter. They're just barely removed from the Oscar campaign for which culminated in four Academy Awards, including . Just two months later, theyâre back together at the with their third feature together and fourth film, counting the 2022 short âBleat.â
âWe do have a bit of a double act going on,â shrugs Stone.
Their collaboration has by now become so regular, and the talking points so scripted, that it would be easy to take it for granted. Minutes before they sat down for an interview in Cannes, a press release went out with the news that Lanthimos and Stone will soon begin shooting another movie together, titled âBugonia.â
Opposite as they may seem â one a 35-year-old star from Arizona, the other a 50-year-old arthouse filmmaker from Athens â theyâve rapidly formed one of the moviesâ strongest director-actor partnerships, a collaboration based on a shared sense of absurdity and a willingness to go, full-tilt, to some very strange places.
For Stone, the connection she feels with Lanthimos isnât so different than the one she does with Nathan Fielder, the darkly deadpan comedian of
âI donât say this lightly even though I know itâs easy to use this word flippantly: Theyâre both geniuses," says Stone. âThey are. I think itâs just an innate thing. It canât really be taught or described. Itâs just a way of seeing society and people. Youâre actually both drawn to themes of: Why is this social structure like this? Why do we have these rules? How are we supposed to function within them?â
You can grasp a similar attitude in Lanthimos and Stoneâs opening volley of answers to unasked questions, disarming the regular rhythms of an interview. Or in how Stone, every bit the movie star, constantly undercuts herself with self-deprecating sarcasm.
But you can most see it in their movies together. The aggressive period farce of Bella Baxterâs childlike experience of social mores in âPoor Things.â In âKinds of Kindness,â a triptych of extreme tales of controlling relationships, Lanthimos, working again with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, continues his idiosyncratic examinations of social conformity.
âI got inspired by reading âCaligulaâ by Camus,â Lanthimos says. âI just started thinking about one manâs control over other peopleâs lives. Then I thought it would be interesting to explore on a more personal level how that would feel, having someone be in total control over your life, even in the most minute detail.â
âKinds of Kindness,â which Searchlight Pictures will release June 21 in theaters, was an opportunity for Stone (aside from âBleatâ) to work with Lanthimos in the style of his earlier films (âThe Lobster," ) with Filippou.
âIt was the chance to finally be in that version of Yorgosâ mind,â Stone says. âBefore I met him, obviously, those were the only ones I had seen.â
The two had discussed making âKinds of Kindnessâ before âPoor Things,â but shot it in the aftermath of their Oscar-winner during its lengthy post-production process due to the filmâs large amount of special effects.
âDo you remember we made this as fast as we could because we were like, âI donât know what the hell is going to happen on âPoor Things?ââ Stone reminds Lanthimos.
âEveryday after work, weâd talk about it. How was it? Did you watch the rushes? What do you think?â continues Stone. âAnd heâs like: âThis is a disaster.â Every single day. And I'd go, âOK, thatâs what I thought.ââ
Alternatively, âKinds of Kindness,â Stone says âwas free and happy and everyoneâs going to love this.â
That might be surprising for anyone's who's seen the three-hour âKinds of Kindness,â which uses largely the same company of actors across all three stories. (Among them: Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley.) The three parts take stories of work-life balance, spousal suspicion and sexual abuse to severe, surreal lengths.
For Stone, âKinds of Kindnessâ extends a run of daringly unconventional projects, including âThe Curseâ and which she produced, at a time when Stone could, by herself, help greenlight nearly anything.
âThe common denominator of the things Iâve been a part of are that theyâre things I want to watch,â Stone says. âThatâs the only gauge that I have. If itâs not something that I would be like, âI gotta go see this the day it comes out,â then itâs probably not a good fit for me.â
But she and Lanthimos may be shifting the bar for what constitutes âmainstream.â The brutal extremes of âKinds of Kindnessâ have led to some, in comparing it to âPoor Things,â referencing their last one â an unabashedly profane coming-of-age tale about a dead woman reanimated with a childâs brain â like it was some kind of all-audiences crowd pleaser.
âItâs so funny to hear people talk about âPoor Thingsâ like the conventional film that we made,â says Lanthimos, smiling. âI get a little bit irritated but then I go, no wait, itâs great that people consider âPoor Things,â like, a normal thing. We couldnât get it made for 12 years.â
Yet at this point, Stone and Lanthimosâ collaboration is so continuous that the projects can bleed into each other. Take Stoneâs already viral dance in âKinds of Kindness,â a moment splashed through the filmâs trailers. That was initially just something Stone was doing in between scenes on âPoor Things.â
âShe would put on a song and dance like crazy,â says Lanthimos. âI was like, âI want you to do this in âKinds of Kindness.ââ
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
