Bugonia

Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos' most expensive film and his fourth collaboration with Emma Stone, may not be remembered as one of his classics or at least more original works, with it being a remake from the 2003 Korean film {Save the Green Planet!} by Jang Jun-hwan that follows the same plot quite closely. But that doesn't mean that the film is without merit for Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy (from other brutal high-class satires like {The Menu} or {Succession}), as they cleverly take the surreal premise and place it into the instantly recognisable world of conspiracy theorists, negationists, flat earthers, and other crackpots that inexplicably seem to be getting louder and louder.

The plot follows a CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company, played by Emma Stone, who is kidnapped by a man and his cousin, obsessed that she is in reality an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. Without the large ensemble casts from other films like {Lobster} or {Kinds of Kindness}, {Bugonia} is elevated by two extraordinary leading performances by Stone and Jesse Plemons (poor Plemons, once again typecast as the hillbilly/nutter/literal Nazi after other unfriendly roles in {Civil War} and {Breaking Bad}), both exuding a mix of despair and empathy despite their unpleasant roles that make it mesmerising to watch.

Alongside a couple of Oscar-worthy performances, Aidan Delbis, an actor on the autism spectrum playing the cousin of the kidnapper, becomes the breakthrough of the film, and despite being a relatively minor character, embodies better than anyone the effects of the existentialist crisis that this movie, while often brutally funny and viciously entertaining, may cause you.

Just like the paranoid folk who believe that there's a hidden truth behind everything, {Bugonia} is a film of contrast. It's a beautiful film, shot in {VistaVision} with a narrow 4:3 frame and low to the ground shots that increase the anxiousness of the kidnapping and the mental instability of its characters, but it doesn't mute the warm colours of the cosy ranch and the beautiful vistas of the hives of bees Plemons' character has. Everything contributes to the clash of emotions that the film transmits, in which sometimes the most hilarious scenes are also the most tense and disturbing. It will make you laugh, first due to the absurdity of the situation, and then due to the absurdity of society in general, laughing all the way to its nihilistic yet shockingly cathartic ending.

Perhaps the key aspect that makes {Bugonia} so effective is that, while the characters are distinctively borderline, as expected from Lanthimos, they feel more believable than other allegorical satires like Poor Things, more open to interpretation. Stone's character could be your boss or the CEO of your company who tells you it's okay to leave at 5:30 and not do overtime but "it falls on your conscience", and that believes that your quota is more important that your own health; and Plemons' character could be your polite neighbour who's paranoid about everything and later you're shocked when you see him on the news about just how mentally ill he really was yet nobody cared.

In that regard, the movie could have framed each in a villainous or (more likely for Plemons and his laughable theories) in a condescending way. Instead, Lanthimos makes sure that you don't side with anyone, except perhaps with the nihilistic view that results from the realisation that the only resistance to the modern capitalist society is either accepting your fate as a worker bee... or succumbing to madness.

With {Bugonia}, Yorgos Lanthimos pokes fun at the rise of negationists and flat earthers, but also at the soulless corporations and industries that dehumanise us. It paints a very pessimistic image about our society, one that doesn't need allegoric imagery or dystopian realities to recognise. But despite how disturbing some scenes are and how pessimistic it feels at a whole, you will have a lot of fun watching {Bugonia} (and, no less important, be wowed by three extraordinary performances). You may leave the theatre losing a bit the faith in humanity, but you will surely laugh a lot along the way.