Yorgos Lanthimos makes obedience absurd and often painfully funny. We value him most when his actors let us feel what the rules cost, but he too often repeats a lesson we have already understood.
Fi1m perspective
In The Lobster (2015), finding a partner is compulsory if you want to remain human. Lanthimos and co-writer Efthimis Filippou state the rule plainly and let people adjust their behaviour to fit it. Colin Farrell makes that adjustment hurt. We found the hotel scenes painfully funny because his unhappiness remains recognisable beneath the absurd demand. That is where we rate Lanthimos most highly: when his people can still suffer despite their stiff, formal speech.
Dogtooth (2009) made the family a small dictatorship; The Lobster carried that interest in control into his first English-language feature. The Favourite (2018), with Tony McNamara among its writers, allowed more warmth, and Poor Things (2023) went further. Emma Stone’s Bella travels across an invented Europe, but even in his best-looking film the pauses after the jokes feel like requests for approval. It runs short of things to say about her well before it finishes.
Kinds of Kindness (2024) reunited him with Filippou for three stories about obedience, and showed how easily that precision becomes repetition. The first is sharp enough to justify the severity; the next two keep teaching the same lesson. Robbie Ryan’s camera staying on Stone’s face gives the cruelty a human consequence that the repeated rituals cannot. At 164 minutes, the film gives us too long to notice how little the subject has developed.
Bugonia (2025) works best with Stone and Jesse Plemons arguing in a cellar. Will Tracy’s script sets a pharmaceutical chief executive against the man convinced she is an alien. Lanthimos makes their opposed certainties tense and often funny. Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis gives a dialogue-free passage considerable force, but the film’s insistence on explaining itself weakens what the actors have already conveyed.
We do not need him to become kinder, and Poor Things suggests that being more eager to please is no solution. He does need to stop repeating himself. Start with The Lobster, provided a comedy that offers little reassurance sounds like a reasonable evening.
Biography
Yorgos Lanthimos is a Greek filmmaker born in Athens on 23 September 1973. He began his career in experimental theatre before making his directorial debut with the 2001 film My Best Friend.
Lanthimos gained international recognition with Dogtooth (2009), which won the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He later directed English-language films including The Lobster (2015), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) and The Favourite (2018).
His more recent credits include directing and producing Poor Things (2023) and Bugonia (2025), and writing and directing Kinds of Kindness (2024). He has frequently collaborated with actress Emma Stone. Poor Things won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
