Recensioni de* critic*

“Kinetta” doesn’t really have much to say about anything and plays out like an over-indulgent mumblecore film — ultimately, it underwhelms and fails to validate its own existence. Injected with the same dose of dryness that “The Lobster” and “Killing of a Sacred Deer” would thrive off of a decade later, “Kinetta” is about as refreshing as freeze-dried ice cream — you can tell that Lanthimos hadn’t yet refined his now wry sense of direction.

Dialogue is sparse, and it takes some time for the threesome’s dynamic to come into focus, to the extent that it ever does. Lanthimos shot much of the film with a hand-held camera, a device more irritating than purposeful. But we know from later films that he would soon develop a smoother, more controlled sense of craft.

While he’s not hinting around at the kind of systems of control he’ll expand on to surreal effect in Dogtooth, The Lobster and elsewhere, Lanthimos enjoys provoking us visually.

Even for those of us who like our art films bleakly inscrutable, Kinetta was a tall order.

The reticent interactions of Lanthimos’ trio of despairing souls mirrors the faded hopes of a transitory generation of dreamers, yet sadly Kinetta is too lost amongst the small, ostensibly insignificant gestures of its characters to truly grasp the larger movements occurring within the periphery.

But whereas in his later films, Lanthimos has moved towards a more (festival) crowd-pleasing black comedy, here he is encumbered by a portentousness that is unrelieved and makes for an arduous and unrewarding watch.