Kind of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos
Thriller • 2024 • 2h 45m
Synopsis
On London's rainy nights, Miles wanders through the city, secretly photographing strangers, peering through windows and capturing fragments of other people's lives. Under the pseudonym Rain Catcher, he publishes and sells his photographs, attracting hundreds of thousands of followers and the attention of the art world. But when a mysterious woman begins to appear repeatedly in his photographs, the tables are turned: Miles himself becomes the object of observation and persecution. As his work is sabotaged, his reputation compromised and the people close to him placed in danger, the photographer embarks on an increasingly delirious investigation to discover the woman's identity and the reasons behind her presence. But behind the persecution lies a truth destined to call the entire story into question.
Review
3 min read
Reviewed by Beatrice
· 12. November 2026
Taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events.
Susan Sontag
Those who watch without being seen, stealing images and fragments of other people's lives to turn them into success, may suddenly find themselves on the other side of the lens. This is the reversal at the heart of Michele Fiascaris's Rain Catcher, a psychological thriller that explores contemporary voyeurism and the ambiguous relationship between observation, appropriation and exploitation.
Miles does not simply photograph reality: he uses it. Strangers' lives become material to display, sell and convert into popularity, while the boundary between artistic research and invasion of privacy dissolves behind the justification of the image. The art world, apparently interested in his talent, is no less subject to the same logic: what matters is not so much the value of his photographs as the number of his followers. A chain of exploitation in which everyone seeks their own advantage, until the mechanism turns against the very person who set it in motion.
While in Primetime the television machine turns the pursuit of sexual predators into entertainment, guilt into ratings and outrage into a product for consumption, in Rain Catcher Miles engages in an apparently different activity: he secretly photographs strangers, takes fragments of their intimacy and transforms them into images capable of bringing him visibility, recognition and success. The point of connection is not simply the presence of cameras, but the transformation of other people's lives into a spectacle to be consumed.
In both films, the image is not neutral: it selects, exposes, manipulates and generates value. Those who observe claim the right to use what they see, while those being observed lose control over their own representation.
There is also an interesting difference: in Primetime, voyeurism is orchestrated by a media apparatus; in Rain Catcher, it originates in the individual initiative of a photographer. Yet both films show how thin the boundary between observation, intrusion and exploitation can become.
Fiascaris demonstrates considerable visual sensitivity. Rain-soaked nighttime London, with its artificial lights and the monumental geometries of the Barbican, becomes a space that is both seductive and threatening. Photographs, reflections, windows and vantage points construct a universe in which looking also means exposing oneself to the gaze of others. The direction makes effective use of the possibilities offered by the image, while the editing and soundscape build a tension that draws viewers into the protagonist's progressive loss of control.
It is no coincidence that the director conceived the film as a near-death experience: the protagonist's mind, suspended in an extreme condition, attempts to rework events, come to terms with his own responsibility and perhaps even rewrite his own story. A key to interpretation that lends meaning to the fragmented narrative, without entirely dispelling its uncertainties.
The film has a distinct originality and manages to sustain interest through a web of clues, suspicions and constant reversals. Its compelling thriller dimension, however, coexists with a rather disorienting narrative structure.
Recurring scenes, overlapping timelines and the story's continuous detours sometimes accumulate confusion rather than generate genuine progression. Only in the finale, when the real twist emerges, do the elements scattered throughout the narrative fall into place and the perspective change radically.
Recurring scenes, overlapping timelines and the story's continuous detours sometimes accumulate confusion rather than generate genuine progression. Only in the finale, when the real twist emerges, do the elements scattered throughout the narrative fall into place and the perspective change radically.
Rain Catcher thus alternates successful visual insights with less controlled narrative passages, yet finds in its ambiguity and its ability to sustain tension a reason for interest. Because those who have spent their lives watching others without being seen may discover, too late, that they were never truly in control of the gaze.
Visibility is a trap.
Michel Foucault
