Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

Yorgos Lanthimos often makes films about monstrosities. Monstrous people (Dogtooth), monstrous societies (The Lobster), monstrous…monsters (Poor Things). He weilds these unsavory characters to make fierce and funny critiques of humans and the societies we build, and yet there’s always a softness to be found, a kernel of hope. One doesn’t bother spending their life criticizing something they’ve given up on, and Lanthimos hasn’t given up on us just yet. And then came Bugonia. It’s the closest he’s come to throwing up his hands, finding few bright spots in its class struggle between the ruthless haves and the desperate have-nots. 

Emma Stone’s Michelle is the have. She’s the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and her days are regimented, her surroundings pristine, and her buzz words frequent. She doesn’t care about her employees or the people taking the medicine her company produces. She cares about efficiency and profit, and she’ll sacrifice anyone (except herself) to get them.

The have-nots aren’t much better. Jesse Plemons’ Teddy and Aidan Delbis’ Don are cousins living together in a run-down home. They are the last remnants of their family, tucked away outside of town, bonded by the echo chamber of their damage. Teddy is consumed by a righteous rage at society’s disregard for human and bee life, and he’s convinced his neurodivergent cousin to follow him down a dark path. They’re going to kidnap Michelle, cut off her hair, and slather her in antihistamine cream because Teddy is convinced she’s an alien. He’s spent countless hours online speculating about and studying their infiltration of humanity, and he believes that the upcoming lunar eclipse gives them a rare opportunity to fight back.

The bulk of the film takes place between those three unpleasant people, giving your emotions no mooring that doesn’t feel compromised. Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy still find plenty of comedy in the trio’s awful interactions, leaning hard into Michelle’s superiority complex and Teddy’s unwavering certainty about his preposterous belief. Their contempt for each other is palpable, yet both are trying desperately to contain themselves. Teddy thinks he needs to behave in a more controlled and civilized manner than the aliens while Michelle is pulling out every trick in the book to de-escalate the situation. The problem is that neither of them are good at it, so their conversations crackle with falseness. And that’s the kind of comedy Lanthimos excels at: people following social rules badly.

Plemons and Stone play up every bit of their characters’ idiosyncrasies while still maintaining reasons for sympathy. This is not a film that comes down hard on either the haves or have-nots. The film comes down hard on both of them.

The closest we get to a voice of reason is Delbis’ Don, whose character and the actor himself are autistic. He’s an especially interesting addition to the Lanthimos oeuvre as Yorgos’ entire approach gives autistic people many things to connect with. His characters tend to speak in a monotone (which only Delbis does here), and they struggle to follow the world’s absurd social standards. Here, the other two characters represent opposing ends of a cultural divide. They refuse to see each other’s humanity, and none of their interactions are genuine. Don, observing everything, is sympathetic towards and confused by both of them. His struggle to figure out what to do becomes the core tragedy of the film and serves as a sobering reminder of how imperiled the rest of us are while these two sides battle.

Supporting these great performances are a bevy of frequent collaborators with Lanthimos, including cinematographer Robbie Ryan and composer Jerskin Fendrix. Everyone’s familiarity helps ensure the tone is consistently strange and specific, taking advantage of Yorgos’ tendency to make films about something just adjacent to the real world to add flourishes that keep you off balance.

The sense of uncertainty this instills is key to keeping Bugonia interesting, because while kidnapping a CEO and accusing her of being an alien is strange, it’s not implausible. A guy who’s had a series of defeats in his life falling hard into doomsday online speculation and an absurdly wealthy businesswoman being so out of touch that she can’t sympathize with regular people are increasingly regular occurrences in real life. The only thing pushing Bugonia into the fantastical is the hanging question of whether Michelle is, in fact, an alien. Your mileage will vary on how much you entertain this possibility, but the film gives you reason after reason not to dismiss it entirely. Stone’s shaved head (a necessity for blocking communication with the other aliens, according to Teddy), robs her of the comfortable familiarity a star brings to the big screen. It’s her but it’s also not her, or at least not at all how we expect her. Layer onto that the stiffness Stone brings to the character and the intelligence Plemons’ puts behind Teddy’s fumbling and there are times where you think that the whole alien accusation might be real. And if Bugonia didn’t pull off such an outlandish trick then it would sputter into trite critiques of our cultural divide. The possibility, though, allows the sides to balance and lets Lanthimos land another sharp critique of everyone’s faults.

Release: In theaters now
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writers: Will Tracy
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis