CANNES ā Before a journalist has even lobbed a question, Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos spit out a string of overlapping answers.
āWe have a great relationship,ā begins Lanthimos. āāWe just love working together,ā adds Stone. āIt was cool to do a modern-day piece.ā āGoing back to some of the early stuff,ā says Lanthimos. āA throwback,ā says Stone. āOur relationship has evolved over time,ā Lanthimos adds.
Recommended Videos
āTotally,ā says Stone.
Stone and Lanthimos have by now honed their patter. They're just barely removed from the Oscar campaign for āPoor Things,ā which culminated in four Academy Awards, including best actress for Stone. Just two months later, theyāre back together at the Cannes Film Festival with āKinds of Kindness,ā their third feature together and fourth film, counting the 2022 short āBleat.ā
āWe do have a bit of a double act going on,ā 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 āBugonia.ā
Opposite as they may seem ā one a 35-year-old star from Arizona, the other a 50-year-old arthouse filmmaker from Athens ā theyāve rapidly formed one of the moviesā 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 isnāt so different than the one she does with Nathan Fielder, the darkly deadpan comedian of āThe Curse.ā
āI donāt say this lightly even though I know itās easy to use this word flippantly: Theyāre both geniuses," says Stone. āThey are. I think itās just an innate thing. It canāt really be taught or described. Itās just a way of seeing society and people. Youāre 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?ā
You can grasp a similar attitude in Lanthimos and Stoneās 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 āThe Favourite." Bella Baxterās childlike experience of social mores in āPoor Things.ā In āKinds of Kindness,ā a triptych of extreme tales of controlling relationships, Lanthimos, working again with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, continues his idiosyncratic examinations of social conformity.
āI got inspired by reading āCaligulaā by Camus,ā Lanthimos says. āI just started thinking about one manās control over other peopleās 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.ā
āKinds of Kindness,ā which Searchlight Pictures will release June 21 in theaters, was an opportunity for Stone (aside from āBleatā) to work with Lanthimos in the style of his earlier films (āThe Lobster," āThe Killing of a Sacred Deer" ) with Filippou.
āIt was the chance to finally be in that version of Yorgosā mind,ā Stone says. āBefore I met him, obviously, those were the only ones I had seen.ā
The two had discussed making āKinds of Kindnessā before āPoor Things,ā but shot it in the aftermath of their Oscar-winner during its lengthy post-production process due to the filmās large amount of special effects.
āDo you remember we made this as fast as we could because we were like, āI donāt know what the hell is going to happen on āPoor Things?āā Stone reminds Lanthimos.
āEveryday after work, weād talk about it. How was it? Did you watch the rushes? What do you think?ā continues Stone. āAnd heās like: āThis is a disaster.ā Every single day. And I'd go, āOK, thatās what I thought.āā
Alternatively, āKinds of Kindness,ā Stone says āwas free and happy and everyoneās going to love this.ā
That might be surprising for anyone's who's seen the three-hour āKinds of Kindness,ā 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, āKinds of Kindnessā extends a run of daringly unconventional projects, including āThe Curseā and Jane Schoenbrun's āI Saw the TV Glow,ā which she produced, at a time when Stone could, by herself, help greenlight nearly anything.
āThe common denominator of the things Iāve been a part of are that theyāre things I want to watch,ā Stone says. āThatās the only gauge that I have. If itās not something that I would be like, āI gotta go see this the day it comes out,ā then itās probably not a good fit for me.ā
But she and Lanthimos may be shifting the bar for what constitutes āmainstream.ā The brutal extremes of āKinds of Kindnessā have led to some, in comparing it to āPoor Things,ā referencing their last one ā an unabashedly profane coming-of-age tale about a dead woman reanimated with a childās brain ā like it was some kind of all-audiences crowd pleaser.
āItās so funny to hear people talk about āPoor Thingsā like the conventional film that we made,ā says Lanthimos, smiling. āI get a little bit irritated but then I go, no wait, itās great that people consider āPoor Things,ā like, a normal thing. We couldnāt get it made for 12 years.ā
Yet at this point, Stone and Lanthimosā collaboration is so continuous that the projects can bleed into each other. Take Stoneās already viral dance in āKinds of Kindness,ā a moment splashed through the filmās trailers. That was initially just something Stone was doing in between scenes on āPoor Things.ā
āShe would put on a song and dance like crazy,ā says Lanthimos. āI was like, āI want you to do this in āKinds of Kindness.āā
___
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP