Emma Stone x 3 in Yorgos Lanthimos' KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024).
Kinds of Kindness has just hit theaters, and Yorgos Lanthimos is back in the news cycle. It seems the Greek director's Hollywood success has set him on a path of productivity unlike anything seen in his Greek Weird Wave origins. By his side, we can find Emma Stone, who's quickly becoming Lanthimos' most emblematic collaborator. Since their first team-up for 2018's The Favourite, they have shot the silent short Bleat, the Oscar champion Poor Things, and the Cannes award-winning Kinds of Kindness. Next comes Bugonia, a remake of the South Korean Save the Green Planet, where Stone will play a CEO kidnapped by two men who believe her to be an alien.
Though it's nice to see such a burgeoning artistic partnership flourish in today's cinematic landscape, I wish I was fonder of their bond. As it stands, I'm not sure they bring the best out of each other…
Perhaps because Bleat remains so difficult to track down, I feel that Stone and Lanthimos' collab has seen a succession of diminishing returns. While The Favourite unleashed what's probably the actress' most impressive big screen turn, I wasn't too fond of what she was up to in Poor Things. But even then, the director's vision survived the disorganized extravagance of his leading lady. Kinds of Kindness is almost a reversal, reigning Stone in with sharp results – her two final scenes excluded – while Lanthimos' work suffers from disengaging cruelties spread thin through three successive tales that, like the dynamic duo's output, lose steam with each new entry.
I understand I'm in the minority when it comes to these two, and that many cinephiles couldn't be more excited over their continued association. Still, their success made me think about other faithful duos of directors and their actors, artists who made each other better and seemed to understand the other's approach, best qualities, and strengths like no one else. If asked to pick my favor of such partnerships on the pages of film history, I guess I'd have to go with Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. Or maybe Josef Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, and the union of Yasujiro Ozu and Sestsuko Hara. Count the masterpieces between those pairings and the mind reels.
Zhao Tao in Jia Zhangke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (2024).
And what about current dynamic duos? Well, the topic is so vast it feels daunting to grasp one definitive answer. You know how much I love Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz, Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton, Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams, among many others. Still, I'm not trying to overthink this, so I'll go with a team that has been on my mind since their new film bowed at the Croisette. Is there a more besotting couple in contemporary cinema than Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao? His camera loves her, and she breathes humanity into his experiments on social storytelling and political provocation.
Recently, their Caught by the Tides was picked up for American distribution by Janus Films and Sideshow, so you can hope to see it in theaters soon.
Another director-and-actress/husband-and-wife couple whose joint efforts have been on the news is, of course, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Earlier this week, Nick Cassavetes confirmed his mother has had Alzheimer's for the past five years and is currently in the depths of dementia. In an ironic twist of fate, mother and son had previously explored themes like these in their work. In 2004's The Notebook, Rowlands played a woman who has lost her grasp on lucidity, and can't remember the love of her life on most days. As someone who has seen loved ones suffer from this same illness, I can't imagine what the Cassavetes clan is going through and can only wish them the best.
John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands in their last film together, LOVE STREAMS (1984).
As a cinephile, one struggles not to think back to the works this titan of acting did with her erstwhile paramour and best director. Across a dozen features, the cineaste changed the landscape of independent American cinema forever, bringing character-based cinema to new psychological depths. Moreover, Rowlands' work came to represent the height of this realist approach to performance, full of improvisational business and excavations of the human soul. John died in 1989, and we can safely say that Rowlands will never return to the silver screen. Still, their legacy lives on, and their impact can't be overstated. Indeed, few artistic collaborations have been so influential. For better and for worse, they changed the way movies are made.
What about you, dear reader? What are your favorite director-actor dynamic duos? Which team-ups would you like to see further explored at The Film Experience?