Bugonia [2025]

 Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist and unhinged black comedies have toggled between relatively minimalist palettes and unreservedly maximalist ones. Bugonia was primarily constructed in the former vein – seething with anxiety, paranoia, gallows humour, and satire on class warfare, corporate malfeasance and exploitation – and soared for stretches with the unsettling ferocity and straight-faced schlock of his dystopian parable The Lobster. However, unlike that earlier film, it instead ended up literalizing the plot, delivering philosophical explanations and veering towards grandiose tendencies in the final third leading to the “extraterrestrial” climax. That jump into fantasy partially offset the tense and edgy buildup, even if it ultimately closed with a fine montage accompanied by Marlene Dietrich’s rendition of the great Pete Seeger folk song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”. Remade from the Korean film Save the Green Planet!, it follows two marginalized and alienated guys – conspiracy theory-obsessed Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) – who kidnap Michelle (Emma Stone), the CEO of a powerful pharmaceutical company, assuming her to be an alien (“Andromedan”) secretly here in human form to destroy earthlings and its ecology. At its heart lay the psychological duel between the cold, manipulative and sociopathic Michelle, with her doublespeak, consulting jargon, and frightening lack of empathy, and Teddy, whose grief, past trauma, and emotional estrangement – complemented by his intelligence and detestation for the neoliberal monstrosity that the pharma company represents – has transitioned into volatile and destructive monomania. Stone was riveting, and Plemons no less compelling, in embodying their characters, while Delbis was quietly affecting as the tragically lost and fragile Don, in this bleak and unsparing work that stopped short of brilliance due to Lanthimos’ inability to pull back.

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Genre: Black Comedy/Thriller/Social Satire/Sci-Fi

Language: English

Country: UK