Review: 'Bugonia' brings Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos together for more surreal magic, but Jesse Plemons' manic performance is the driving force
In the long history of actor/director collaborations, the pairing of director Yorgos Lanthimos and actor Emma Stone is quickly becoming one of the most fascinating and producing the most astonishing results — which is evident in their new film, the surreal and satirical “Bugonia.”
Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a hard-charging CEO at a multi-national tech and retail corporation called Auxolith, which looks like the result if Meta and Amazon had a baby. She tries very hard to appear like a caring boss, in the double-speak way she urges employees to leave by 5:30 — but only if they have all their work done.
According to Teddy Ganz (Jason Plemons), who lives a solitary life keeping bees and training his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, in a remarkable debut) for an ill-defined apocalypse, Michelle is also an alien. Teddy has developed a deeply complex conspiracy that Michelle is from the galaxy of Andromeda, sent to Earth to destroy humanity — the details get a little complicated.
What’s more simple is the plot Teddy has devised, where he and Don kidnap Michelle, shave her head — to make it harder for her to transmit to her mothership — and hold her in Teddy’s basement until she confesses that she’s an alien and convinces the Andromedan emperor that their kind should leave Earth at once.
Michelle, trained in self-defense, now must test one of her CEO skills — thinking on her feet — to figure out how to get herself out of the custody of this apparent madman. Part of her escape plan involves learning about Teddy’s ailing mother (Alicia Silverstone), and her connection to Michelle’s company.
Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy (“The Menu”) — who’s written a loose remake of Jang Joon-Hwan’s 2003 Korean comedy-drama “Save the Green Planet!” — ride the bleeding edge between farcical humor and terrifying suspense. What’s happening to Michelle is both horrifying and absurdly funny, a territory Lanthimos has made a second home in his past films (such as “The Lobster,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “The Favourite,” “Poor Things” and “Kinds of Kindness”).
Stone goes all-in with her performance, revealing Michelle’s intelligence and her ability to find the winning angle in any situation. Stone also commits physically, letting Lanthimos film her getting her head shaved — in case you’re wondering why Stone showed up on red carpets with a pixie cut.
Plemons, though, becomes the driving force of “Bugonia,” as his Teddy channels an array of movie nutcases — from “The Shining’s” Jack Torrance to “Dr. Strangelove’s” Jack D. Ripper — and finds the wounded soul within the fractured psyche. His scenes with Delbis and with Stone allow the audience to learn a useful skill these days: How to dig into the mind of someone overwhelmed by conspiratorial lunacy.
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‘Bugonia’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, October 31, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violent content including a suicide, grisly images and language. Running time: 118 minutes.