New Emma Stone film featuring cooked finger and group sex has depraved Roman inspiration-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

Kinds of Kindness is co-written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Picture: Searchlight)

Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film Kinds of Kindness – their follow up to Poor Things – has a wild Roman inspiration.

The movie, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Friday, is a challenging watch that has been dubbed ‘disturbing’ and ‘next-level sickening’, as well as being applauded for its bold, envelope-pushing content.

Kinds of Kindness involves bodily mutilation, animal cruelty, Stone serving up her fried chopped-off finger and a bout of vigorous group sex in its three films tied together loosely by a theme.

In a cast which also includes Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau and Margaret Qualley, the first film of three also shares a toxic relationship between a boss and his employee, who lets him control every aspect of his life, up to an including a demand that he commit vehicular manslaughter.

Now, Oscar winner Lanthimos has revealed the starting point for his film as the Roman emperor Caligula, a famously excessive and depraved figure – and it all makes a little more sense.

‘We started many years ago and in the beginning, the film was going to be one of the stories, the first story actually,’ Lanthimos told Metro.co.uk and other outlets at the press conference on Saturday.

The film has been described as disturbing and features plenty of blood, sex and violence (Picture: Searchlight)

‘My first inspiration was reading Caligula and just thinking [about] how a man can have such power over other people and other individuals that he came into contact with.

‘I started imagining it in out contemporary world, someone who would have complete control over this other person. Like, from what time he wakes up, what he eats, if he can get married, have sex, have an accident, die – all of these things.’

Dafoe plays the twisted boss controlling businessman Robert’s (Plemons) life, which does involve a full overview over his nutrition, reading habits and even sex life.

Lanthimos has now revealed the film’s inspiration with its power dynamics (Picture: Searchlight/Rex)

Caligula, who ruled Rome from 37 to 41AD famously became a more self-indulgent, sadistic and sexually perverse tyrant throughout his years in power, even going so far as to demand he be treated as a god and plan to make his horse a consul.

His exploits were famously covered by ancient historian Suetonius in his work, Twelve Caesars, as well as forming the basis of the play Caligula by Albert Camus and an extract from Robert Graves fictionalised but historical ‘autobiography’ I, Claudius.

Caligula was assassinated as part of a conspiracy that involved senators, courtiers and even members of the Praetorian Guard, who served as the emperor’s personal bodyguards.

Lanthimos then shared that he and co-writer Efthimis Filippou ‘felt the need to try something different in terms of form’, making the film into a triptych and whipping up the other two films.

Roman emperor Caligula wad known for being a depraved, cruel and self-indulgent ruler who slid into insanity (Picture: DEA/G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images)

In the second, Plemons is a police officer convinced that his wife (Stone) is an imposter after she returns from being stranded at sea, and the third has them recruiting for a pair of cult leaders (Dafoe and Hong Chau) who run a sex compound and are searching for a prophesied girl who can raise the dead.

Stone also revealed that Bella is the ‘only [character] I couldn’t let go’ after shooting wrapping, adding: ‘Still won’t, never will.’

But she dismissed a return to the role, saying: ‘I don’t think I should revisit her, it probably doesn’t make sense, but that’s the only character I was devastated to let go of.’

Kinds of Kindness includes lots of extreme content (Picture: Searchlight)

Elsewhere in the rather rambunctious conference, the La La Land star joked around about her relationship with Lanthimos, with the pair having worked together on three films now, with their fourth – an alien conspiracy drama called Burgonia – in the works.

When he was asked if Stone was his muse, she leapt in declaring: ‘He’s MY muse!’

She was also appreciated one journalist’s particular efforts to call her by her real name after she recently revealed she ‘freaked out’ after being forced to change her name to work professionally.

‘My name is Emily, thank you,’ she told him after the audience laughed appreciatively over his efforts.

Willem Dafoe, Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos at the Cannes Film Festival premiere on Friday (Picture: Getty)

When asked if she would have preferred to have kept her birth name of Emily Jean Stone, she told The Hollywood Reporter: ‘That would be so nice. I would like to be Emily. People I work with call me Emily when they get to know me.’

‘[I only call myself Emma] just because my name was taken [by another actress in the Screen Actors’ Guild],’ she shared.

‘Then I freaked out a couple of years ago. For some reason, I was like, “I can’t do it anymore. Just call me Emily”.‘

Kinds of Kindness is scheduled for UK release on June 28.

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