Two conspiracy nuts abduct a high-powered CEO in this black comedy thriller from Poor Things and The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos. Convinced that pharmaceutical boss Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien from the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) stash her away in the hope of brokering a meeting with her Martian overlords. Can the pair save the green planet? Or is their demented mission a product of Teddy’s traumatised, Internet-rotted brain?
On paper, Bugonia is Lanthimos’s most accessible film yet. An Americanised remake of a South Korean cult classic, it plays things relatively straight, following the tone and structure of many a kidnap thriller which preceded it. Everybody speaks like a relatively normal person, and no-one eats spaghetti like a weirdo (although some spaghetti is eaten) – by Lanthimos’s standards, it’s positively mainstream, and far less peculiar than the work upon which it’s based. Coming over twenty years after director Jang Joon-hwan’s original version, Bugonia feels more timely than ever – and uniquely American in its depiction of a fucked-up, fucked-over society doomed by bonkers conspiracy theories, buzzword-blabbering CEOs and dying honey bees.
Lanthimos’s fourth feature collaboration with Stone reaps the rewards of their shared familiarity and dedication to the ethos. Stone is a champ about the whole thing, spending most of the film strapped to a cot in Teddy and Don’s stinky dungeon, and forced to undergo all manner of torture – including a forced head shave, creamed-up face, and electroshock torture. Still, she’s no whimpering damsel in distress, and remains a fierce opponent to an increasingly frustrated Teddy, even in her most helpless moments. Stone and Plemons are, of course, phenomenal, but the whole cast are firing on all cylinders. This includes Excess Baggage star Alicia Silverstone, here making millennial audiences feel thoroughly ancient by playing, uh, Jesse Plemons’ mother. It’s newcomer Aidan Delbis who shines brightest of all though – bringing a sense of warmth and humanity to a film that’s otherwise cold and quite cruel.
That said, Bugonia is Lanthimos’s funniest film yet, particularly in its savage interplay between Michelle and Teddy. While writer Will Tracy’s screenplay may be too conformist for the Lanthimos faithful, it’s also more challenging than the popcorn crowd might have expected, relishing in its moments of extreme gore and grim torture sequences. Yes, it’s a departure from form, but it’s an uncompromising vision, set on a path that’s both deviously unexpected, but also pure and distilled Yorgos Lanthimos.
BUGONIA is out now in UK cinemas.
