When Yorgos Lanthimos rings, you pay attention. Ever since the Greek director stunned us with 2015’s The Lobster, we’ve paid close attention to what he’s had on the fire. His latest feature film is Bugonia, a remake of the South Korean film Save the Green Planet! from 2003, with Lanthimos roping in his favourites to pull it off.
And pull it off, he has. Bugonia reunites the director with Emma Stone in what is an obvious slam-dunk role, and gives room for Jesse Plemons to do what he does best. Combined with an airtight script from new collaborator Will Tracy, who ‘gets’ Yorgos’ style of absurd black comedy, and cinematography that never bores, Bugonia was well worth the two hours of our day we surrendered and, dare we say it, the price of a ticket and popcorn.
Aliens, conspiracy theories, and a world destined for doom
We’ll admit we haven’t actually seen Save the Green Planet! And, since we’re ‘fessing up, we’ll also mention that we weren’t familiar with the definition of ‘Bugonia’ until just before the screening. Not that you need a dictionary to enjoy Bugonia, which might be Lanthimos’ most approachable film, even if it is still an expectedly dark, twisted comedy that’ll have you chuckling one minute and cringing the next.
The film follows Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a beekeeper who believes everything he reads on the internet. He and his obviously too-trusting cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), who’s only following in Teddy’s footsteps, are convinced the world is in danger and needs saving from an alien race hidden in plain sight. When Teddy reckons he’s identified one of these aliens, taking the form of one Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), a bigwig CEO of a pharmaceutical company, the two cousins cook up an intricate plot to kidnap her. Chaos ensues.
Like most of Lanthimos’ entries, Bugonia is anything but action-heavy, instead relying on screenwriter Will Tracy and the moxy that Plemons and Stone dish out in spades to keep you entertained. We follow the cousins’ attempts to ‘break’ their captor in the basement, and secure passage to her mothership to negotiate terms between the humans and the aliens, while avoiding a nationwide manhunt for one of the country’s most prolific CEOs.
Despite being a remake of a 2003 Korean film, it’s Tracy’s script and Lanthimos’ deeply troubling view of the present world that bring it up to scratch for 2025. Bugonia tells a tale of a world nearing its end — personified in Teddy and Don’s performance as the rubes who can’t separate fiction from reality. There are a couple more twists and turns along the two-hour-long film, which never once felt it was overstaying its welcome.
Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone go head-to-head. Need we say more?
Bugonia may well be Plemons’ most compelling performance yet. His tendency to play a long string of sickos has tormented us ever since he appeared in Breaking Bad. Plemons has once again proved himself here, giving us his most terrifying portrayal to date. Not only because he’s obviously mentally ill and has nothing to lose. But because of Plemon’s subtlety in the role that tells the audience something is very wrong.
He’s grubby, dishevelled, and disinterested in the societal norms of all those around him. He’s laser-focused on his goals, which we learn later, is more personally motivated than we’re initially led to believe. The bulk of the film concerns a hairless Emma Stone — shaved off to stop her contacting her mothership, obviously — attempting to convince her captors that she is indeed human. Pleas that fall on deaf ears, who are convinced they know better.
That Bugonia is the title cannot be ignored. Teddy’s attraction to some of Earth’s most valiant beings has much to do with the film’s themes, allowing our lead to reflect on the bees’ impending doom, or colony collapse disorder — not because they’re threatened by a race of aliens, but by humanity itself. It harkens back to some of Bugonia’s deeper points and gives us an idea of what Teddy is (or thinks he is) facing throughout.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Stone is well and truly at the top of her game in Bugonia — for much the same reason we revered Plemons’ performance. Even still, it’s not Stone’s typical role, who plays, for lack of a better word, an asshole, and gains the audience’s sympathies by chance. Being trapped in what Teddy calls the “headquarters of the human resistance” will do that to you.
Stone spends much of the movie’s runtime locked in furious, and oftentimes futile dialogue with Teddy, and it’s here where the movie is funniest, and also darkest. The two argue semantics about various ideologies and what they mean to the world and its subjects, and whether Fuller’s pharmaceutical role is doing humanity any good. Stone’s stoicism throughout is a testament to her acting chops.
We were less impressed by the third biggest character in Bugonia. Dom, Teddy’s shy younger cousin, tags along for most of the movie and is unable to ever equal the likes of Plemons and Stone. Sure, the script doesn’t call for him to be, instead serving as Teddy’s real-time echo-chamber, though slightly detracting from the film overall. We don’t doubt Aidan Delbis’ ability, but with hardly enough room to breathe and occasionally detracting from stellar performances around him, we feel that the character of Don could be reworked, or left out entirely.
Simple but effective camerawork
Bugonia keeps things pretty simple with its cinematography. That’s not to say it doesn’t deliver some excellent visuals, in spite of the film’s very few settings. It’s almost a treat to the viewers when we get to see anywhere that isn’t his home, offering a breath of fresh air, a right that Teddy’s captive is denied, as we watch her suffer through Plemons’ eyes.
Bugonia is bathed in a layer of too-warm synthetic lights that helps to sell the overarching danger of the situation. It’s bolstered by Jerskin Fendrix’s bone-chilling score that reverberates around the room, and pulls you in, almost against your will. It’s a harmony of entirely necessary strings that swell to an almost uncomfortable point — popping as a scene dies and we begin this whole dance again.
Bugonia verdict
Bugonia feels like it’s desperately trying to convey something to its watchers, even if that something isn’t easily definable. It isn’t about to spoon-feed you some deep message about humanity’s impotence, but it’s there as long as you’re willing to pull back the curtain just a bit. The wrong folks might take the film’s ultimately nihilistic view at face value and write it off as another picture berating humanity’s efforts without appreciating it for what it truly is: a Yorgos Lanthimos-directed banger that’s equal parts hilarious, thrilling, and sorrowful. Bee Plus.
Bugonia begins its local theatrical release on Friday, 31 October.
