By Bob Grimm
Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness) keep their bizarre yet awesome cinematic party going with Bugonia, their darkest pairing yet.
Conspiracy-theorist Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin/sidekick, Don (Aidan Delbis), kidnap Michelle (Stone), a corporate head honcho, because they believe she’s an alien. Teddy also has a gripe with Michelle because his mom (Alicia Silverstone!) is going through a medical crisis, and he holds Michelle responsible.
Michelle—insisting that she is not an alien, but willing to use any type of psychological trickery to escape her plight—endures horrible tortures and spaghetti dinners. Lanthimos gives as a hostage thriller like no other, with Stone putting up yet another Oscar-nom-worthy performance.
Plemons, who also co-starred in the just-OK Kinds of Kindness, gets a chance to really go off in Lanthimos Land, and he takes advantage of that chance. He has some career-best moments here, creating a flawed, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes cruel and perhaps genius kidnapper. There’s goodness in him, but trauma has caused him to go off course. Delbis, in his feature-film debut, gives the movie a nice taste of the strange.
The screenplay is satire at its most caustic—think Kubrick meets Michael Haneke (Funny Games)—and the resulting movie has a sly wit with a complete willingness to “go there” in all the right ways. The film is as dark as it gets. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, another Lanthimos mainstay, puts together yet another visual marvel.
To reveal more of the plot would give too much away. If you like Lanthimos, know that this is him at his most unbridled, violent and absolutely crazed.
Is this an awards contender? I don’t know; it might be a little too out there for the typical cinematic-arts voter—but I think Stone and Plemons deserve some awards consideration. Bugonia stands as one of the more original, outlandish and rewarding films of the year.
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