In their second collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone star in a bizarre fight between a conspiracy theorist and Fortune 500 CEO over the existence of aliens: hilarity and chaos ensue.
Bugonia
Starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone, Cedric Dumornay
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Runtime: 1 hour, 58 mins
Synopsis
Believing that the world is being taken over by an invading alien force, conspiracy theorist Teddy (Plemons) and Don (Delbis) enact a plan to kidnap CEO Michelle Fuller (Stone) and force her to end the “invasion” through any means necessary.
Conspiracy Nutcracker
Ari Aster’s Eddington tried to tie together several threads regarding COVID-era conspiracies, personal freedoms, religious manipulation, formation of militia groups and ultimately hit on very few of them. The resulting product was constructed extremely well, but many of the storylines felt unresolved or didn’t ultimately connect.
Bugonia, while certainly a wilder take in scope, is more focused on one element of the culture: conspiracy theories. This focus allows the story to concentrate on which person’s perception of reality is correct: Teddy or Michelle. Of course, there are different sub-threads happening at the same time regarding the class disparity between Teddy and Michelle, the callous, apathetic nature of healthcare CEOs and companies, but those serve as additional context to dive into instead of acting as separate characters dragging down the runtime like they did in Eddington.
I can’t dive into specific details without potential spoilers for the ending, which I promise will provide a satisfactory answer to the debate. However Lanthimos plays the edge so well on what is truthful or not, that you’re going to enjoy the journey getting there.
R.M.F.’s Alien Dream
If you had told me back in 2015 when I started reviewing movies that two of my favorite actors would be Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, I would have guessed either my tastes had worsened or that some terrible illness had washed over me. That seems silly to say now, but remember that neither of them had been in anything substantial by that point. Plemons was certainly not a household name yet (and arguably still isn’t despite his great role choices) and while Stone had cemented their acting chops with 2014’s Birdman, up to that point, they had only starred in romcoms like Crazy Stupid Love or Easy A, or franchises like the Amazing Spiderman or Zombieland.
Credit: Universal / Focus Pictures
For Stone, Bugonia marks her fourth team up with Lanthimos, starting with 2018’s The Favourite, her Oscar-winning performance in 2023’s Poor Things, and last year’s anthology style movie Kinds of Kindness, starring with Plemons for the first time (also his first collaboration with Lanthimos). It’s wonderful and refreshing to see these actors years later having such an incredible range, being able to drop back into the occasional screwball comedy while also trying to go for something weirder or more complex with their frequent collaborations with Lanthimos. These two have committed to his wild and dark comedic visions in a way that feels different than his other stars.
For one, the amount of nudity and sexual content requires both stars and director to nurture immense respect between one another. Especially at a time when there’s so much sex missing from modern Hollywood (which is wild to think about), to be pushing the boundaries in this time and space shows a ton of trust between director and stars. There’s no way you get the sexual freedom that Stone wields in Poor Things without that level of trust, it just wouldn’t work. When you can build that level of trust with one star, it helps build a foundation for future productions when new co-stars rotate in. Rather than trying to communicate your vision to a completely new cast, Lanthimos could lean on Stone and other regulars like Willem Dafoe, to support and flesh out his ideas. This likely helped Plemons as the newer co-star on Kinds of Kindness as he’s asked to do some heavy lifting in that film, especially in the first two vignettes.
Credit: Universal / Focus Pictures
Bugonia doesn’t ask for the same type of vulnerability that either Stone or Plemons used in Kindness, but it does ask them to be weirder and trust that audiences will go with the craziness. By the film’s end, Lanthimos has certainly earned the audience’s attention and trust, making us eager to see what else he’s cooked up. As such, Stone and Plemons deliver a finale performance that’s arguably more memorable than any of the vignettes in Kindness and stacks up well with other amazing moments in Lanthimos’s filmography.
Lastly, I will say, regardless of whether this pair continues to work with Lanthimos, I have deeply missed the type of creative energy that can happen when directors and stars team up frequently. We may pick on or roll our eyes at some of those partnerships now, like Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro for example, but they also created some of the most iconic moments in cinematic history. Every film doesn’t need to be a knockout to justify the chemistry and potential for amazing cinema. If you loved Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), but hated The Irishman (2019), you should also remember that in their heyday, Scorsese and DeNiro created critically acclaimed Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) while just a few years later creating the panned The King of Comedy (1982) before hitting again with Goodfellas (1990).
Source: Variety
If we want partnerships to pay off, we should embrace the idea that not every collaboration will be incredible and deploy enough patience to allow these moments to grow. I’m almost certain that Lanthimos will eventually make something that I don’t resonate with or hits as a complete dud, but when that day comes, I’ll be more than eager to give him and his stars some leeway to keep creating, rather than writing off the potential of that working relationship.
Collabs of Sound
If you’re a fan of Lanthimos, you have definitely heard this composer recently, but you likely didn’t know his name. Jerskin Fendrix has been working on Lanthimos’s last three projects, starting with 2023’s Poor Things and with Bugonia, he finds an interesting mixture of long drawn strings and brass that communicate how bonkers and chaotic the story becomes. If you can imagine tossing the score that Alexandre Desplat composed for Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012) into a blender with a touch of acid, then you’ll start to understand what Fendrix has crafted here. I am hoping his work here gets more recognition and opens up his future prospects, though I wouldn’t be mad if he just keeps pumping out great scores for Lanthimos every year.
Conclusion / Recommendation
Yorgos Lanthimos’s increased output since 2023 hasn’t affected his touch at all, and Bugonia proves there are plenty of amazing stories rolling around in his dark brain that Plemons and Stone are all too excited to explore and portray for us.
Bugonia is surprisingly tamer than some of Lanthimos’s earlier works, even last year’s Kinds of Kindness, but there are still some gruesome moments (and one suicide in the film), so the squeamish may need to wait until this one is streaming / available to purchase. Highly recommend catching this in theaters to enjoy some of the comedic elements with a crowd, as well as support the viability of these types of projects.
Score: 9.6 out of 10
- Embrace The Weirdness- 10
- Plemons and Stone are perfectly cast as Teddy and Michelle, building a palpable, uncomfortable tension between these two characters as they try to outflank the other, gain an upper hand.
- Well-Crafted Conspiracy- 9
- Lanthimos creates a timely story on the dynamics of conspiracy theories without devolving into the same messiness, and gives us plenty to chew on.
- Space Age Score- 10
- Newcomer Jerskin Fendrix has crafted a superb score in his junior year, perfectly accentuating the building madness and chaos.
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