A new cinematic canon may very well be emerging. Films like “One Battle After Another,” “Civil War” and “Eddington” have all painted unique yet not dissimilar portraits of a discordant, extremism-prone America — a vision that seems increasingly resonant under Donald Trump’s second term. Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” a paranoid pressure cooker of a thriller that’s as weird as any of the Greek director’s previous works, is yet another film that shares this vision.
Working from a script penned by “The Menu” scriptwriter Will Tracy, Lanthimos reaffirms himself as a director of extraordinarily distinctive perception. The film reimagines Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 “Save the Green Planet!,” also produced by “Bugonia” backer CJ ENM; Tracy approaches the source text with the eat-the-rich fanaticism of a Ruben Östlund script and imbues it with an almost Cronenbergian psychosis.
The term “bugonia” itself refers to an ancient Mediterranean belief that bees, through ritual, could be generated from the carcass of a dead cow. Fittingly, Lanthimos’ film opens with a poetic montage featuring close-ups of bees, narrated by the film’s deranged protagonist Teddy (Jesse Plemons). Soon, Teddy’s voice-over describes Colony Collapse Disorder — a phenomenon in which worker bees mysteriously disappear, leaving the queen behind and the colony doomed. The film’s metaphors are not exactly subtle.
Enter high-powered CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone). We eventually learn that her company, Auxolith Corp., created this issue, but we’re first exposed to the ambitious business woman through her violent self-defense training regimen and her struggles to record a diversity-training video. Stone’s performance is incomparably precise: She channels an ice-cold focus and ambition fit for the covers of Time and Forbes, yet tempers it with a cunning manipulativeness that underscores every line she delivers. The film marks Stone’s fourth feature collaboration with Lanthimos, yet the pair continues to break new ground. Though she effectively played three distinct roles in “Kinds of Kindness,” her performance here recalls none of them, nor the curiosity and humanism that defined her Oscar-winning turn as Bella Baxter in “Poor Things.”
Lanthimos skillfully establishes the film’s world early on, allowing Michelle’s polished, orderly life to collide with the chaotic, conspiracy-fueled dysfunction that defines Teddy’s. Director of Photography, Robbie Ryan, who also shot “Poor Things” and “The Favourite” for Lanthimos, is similarly effective in his work throughout the film. The anamorphic distortion that Lanthimos has employed since his “Dogtooth” days is ever-present here, most effective in capturing the unnervingly sterile corporate world of the Auxolith headquarters. There is a slow-burn tension in watching Teddy and his co-conspirator cousin Don (undoubtedly a breakout role for first-timer Aidan Delbis) plot Michelle’s abduction — a sequence in which the film’s blackly cynical humor begins to shine, most memorably when Teddy insists the cousins take absurdly emasculating measures to repress any attraction to their captive, perfectly encapsulating Lanthimos’s idiosyncratic tone.
After the kidnapping attempt — a sequence delightfully cross-cut to the tune of Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” — all bets are off. This kidnapping duo feels like a slightly more competent iteration of the antagonistic pair in “Fargo,” and watching them navigate various obstacles — Stone’s character proving difficult to keep pinned down, while outsiders like Stavros Halkias’ Casey, Teddy’s former babysitter-turned-police-officer, further complicate matters — is sensationally explosive. Like Stone, Plemons’ resume precedes him. Nonetheless, this may well be his finest work to date: He takes a character marked by foolish insanity and charges him with a complex emotional sensibility.
“Bugonia” is not without its weaker points, most of which occur during Michelle’s confinement in the cousins’ basement. Some key information emerges here — particularly concerning Auxolith’s relation to Teddy’s ailing mother (Alicia Silverstone) — but pacing issues sap the film’s momentum, making the middle act drag on longer than necessary.
For those who endure the relative tedium of act two, the reward is one of the finest finales in recent cinematic history. The less said about the film’s climax, the better — suffice to say that it is a jaw-dropping, raucous plunge into the depths of Lanthimos and Tracy’s extravagant world.
Just as “Poor Things” featured an unimaginable array of twists and turns, “Bugonia” always seems to have one more trick up its sleeve. The film is sure to provoke the same divisiveness in audiences that “Eddington” did earlier this year — Ari Aster’s influence as a producer is palpable — but Lanthimos strikes a more effective balance between grounded commentary and provocative ambition than most of his contemporaries.
With each film, Lanthimos continues to define his distinct style, and “Bugonia” may be his most fully realized work yet. That a director whose vision veers so far from ordinary life could craft a film so attuned to the chaos and extremism of contemporary America is remarkable — but perhaps these are exactly the times that demand such vision.
“Bugonia” premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. It is set for a limited release in theaters via Focus Features on Oct. 24, followed by a nationwide U.S. release on Oct. 31.
