BUGONIA

Bugonia maybe Yorgos Lanthimos’s most grounded and accessible film to date, not going completely wild until its final act, but that doesn’t mean for a second that it’s not another great film thanks to the excellent performances of Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons and the exquisitely dark yet hilarious screenplay from Will Tracy.

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. These are just some of the most iconic director and actor duos to grace the big screen, and Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have officially joined their ranks. With Lanthimos having directed Stone to her second Academy Award win for Best Actress in a Leading Role in Poor Things, their latest film marks not only their fourth collaboration, but a perfect pairing of Lanthimos’s peculiarities in the stories he tells and Stone’s innate comedic abilities. This time, their collaboration has them reuniting with Jesse Plemons, who they both previously worked with on last year’s Kinds of Kindness, and remaking the South Korean film Save the Green Planet. While it come across as Lanthimos’s most accessible film to date and his least strange, once Bugonia gets going, it is bursting with that deranged energy that has defined Lanthimos’s entire filmography, and with the outstanding performances of Stone and Plemons, it's an enticing, hilarious and shocking cinematic experience to get lost in.

The premise of Bugonia alone is exactly what you would expect of a story that Lanthimos would two: two conspiracist theorists kidnapping and holding a tech company’s CEO hostage in their basement in suspicion that she is secretly an alien here to destroy the planet. It is the right mix of absurd, fantastical and realistic that have defined his previous films, which makes it all the more surprising when the first two acts play out rather tame for one of his stories. Aside from the premise, it’s largely a chamber piece drama with that quirky Lanthimos humour as Teddy and Don hold Michelle hostage and engage in a battle of the wits. It’s never not entertaining with Stone and Plemons chewing on Will Tracy’s screenplay exploring mental health, conspiracies, corporate greed and class inequality, delivering gripping thematic discussions as the tension between hostage and captors slowly builds over the first two acts. But you don’t see Lanthimos’s usual wicked self emerge until the film’s final act, which never holds back for a second and delivers the shocking, absurd and darkly humorous events that audiences expect from Lanthimos with a glorious outrageous and gripping conclusion that more than pays off the careful setup of the first two acts.

Defining the entire film is the question nagging at both the audience and Teddy and Don: is Michelle actually an alien? Tracy ensures his screenplay has compelling arguments for both sides of the arguments, ensuring that the audience never truly knows what is going to happen next but can make a good educated guess as to the answer until the answer is ready to be revealed. Supporting this is the performances of Stone and Plemons. Stone is, as always when working with Lanthimos, brilliant. With a calm collected mess, Stone lets Tracy’s dialogue play out cool and collected, fully aware of the situation her character finds herself in but never panicked about her fate. With a calm intellect and compassion towards the situation that Teddy and Don find themselves in, Stone is ever calculated with the mannerisms and emotions she displays, ensuring that the audience can never tell if Michelle is a CEO with hostage training who knows exactly what she needs to do to survive the situation she finds herself in, or in fact an alien who is not worried knowing that she has the upper hand on her captors. It’s a nuanced performance that you would expect from a revered two time Academy Award winning actress, yet again confirming her status as one of the finest actresses working today.

Equally as impressive as Stone at every turn is Plemons as Michelle’s captor, Teddy. With a steadfast determination in his belief, Plemons brings to life this downtrodden man with all his flaws, but with an alluring charisma that has you truly believing in Teddy’s belief that Michelle is an alien. It is a mesmerizing performance that is as manic as it is heartbreaking, as Plemons explores Teddy’s past as a potential motivation for this kidnapping is revealed through the hard truths Michelle confronts him with. This yearnful exploration of his past with Michelle’s company ensures that even if the audience is not accepting of Teddy’s actions in the film, there is an underlying compassion for Teddy due to his past thanks to the humanity that Plemons brings to his performance. Being paired opposite Stone for the majority of the film, Plemons and Stone develop an electrifying onscreen dynamic energy that plays out this cat-and-mouse like hostage situation, each vying to get the upper hand on the other through their intellect and careful moves, which makes Bugonia an enthralling watch from start to finish. The supporting cast of Alicia Silverstone, Aidan Delbis and Starvos Halkias are all good, but there is no stealing the spotlight from Stone and Plemons who are on a whole other level, both delivering phenomenal work and continuing to prove themselves to be the perfect collaborators with Lanthimos.

As with all of Lanthimos’s films, Bugonia is exceptionally well crafted. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is great, making effective use of wide angles shots that bring an uncomfortable feeling to the film, while the black and white colouring and the changing aspect ratio of the flashbacks from Teddy’s memory adds uncertainty to his recollections that either indicate he is crazy or that Michelle is in fact an alien, further fuelling the story’s central mystery. The set design is simplistic yet striking, from the simple house that Teddy and Don live in with its unfinished and haunting basement they hold Michelle in to the sterile modern corporate headquarters of Michelle’s company, which is given an insidious feeling with Jerskin Fendrix’s unsettling musical score. Despite these elements of the production designed to keep the viewers on edge, the fun, playful nature of Lanthimos’s storytelling is not lost but in fact amplified by some great needle drops, including Green Day and Chappell Roan tracks, with each song selection amplifying the deranged tone of the film to create some hilarious and disturbing moments throughout the film.

If you are looking for strangeness in cinema, you never need to look further than Yorgos Lanthimos, and while his latest film may start off tame, it reaches those unhinged levels of weirdness that will make audiences squirm and laugh uncomfortably by the film’s final act. Fuelled by Will Tracy’s script that is full of sharp dialogue, hilariously uncomfortable moments and strong thematic development within this potential alien hostage situation that gives the film some great absurdist commentary, Yorgos Lanthimos unleashes an endlessly entertaining cinematic experience in Bugonia that though it may not be measuring up to masterful filmmaking of his best films, nonetheless soars due to the incredible performances of Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons that will satisfy any movie goers looking to get their freak on.