You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
With the publication in Psychoanalytic Dialogues of “Belonging and Its Discontents” (Rozmarin, 2024), belonging was launched as a term of art in relational psychoanalysis, functioning as a conceptual bridge between individual existence and the social. While Rozmarin's paper reflects the context of the Israel-Palestine war and foregrounds issues of national and religious identity, belonging has a divergent range of meanings related to community and possession, both positive and negative, regarding what is me, mine, or ours. In particular on the negative side, the need to belong may culminate in such social pathologies as cult membership based on inequities of power, perversion, sexual exploitation, and dehumanization.
Directed and co-written by Yorgos Lanthimos, the ironically titled Kinds of Kindness (hereafter Kinds) vividly illustrates extremes of pathological belonging and is thematically and tonally akin to the Greek director's previous films, which explore relations of domination and dependency — intrafamilial, corporate, and political. While the narratives are relieved by moments of black or outlandish humor, the horrors they depict are inescapable, as totalitarian structures create subjects with totalitarian expectations.
Kinds is distinguished from the director's earlier films by its three-part structure and expansive, nearly three-hour length, making the whole cinematically analogous to a series of novellas situated successively in urban, somewhat rustic, and tropical settings. The characters are played by a small family of actors, most notably the trio of Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Jesse Plemons, whose familiarity kindles anticipation and reinforces the interconnectedness of the plots. A narrative through-line is suggested in the titles by reference to an obscure but significant character named “R.M.F.” And as in many perverse scenarios — which often provide
considerable cinephilic pleasure — settings, décor, clothing, hairstyling, and