‘Bugonia’ Review: An out of this world performance from Emma Stone
After the success of Poor Things (2023), director Yorgos Lanthimos adds another chapter to his critically successful partnership with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.
The chemistry between the two actors is ever flourishing. After Kinds of Kindness (2024), Plemons and Stone have seemingly done it all together on screen - coworkers, spouses and now even abductor and captive. They’ve proven that they can make any dynamic work.
Emma Stone plays CEO Michelle Fuller, who embodies everything wrong with modern society. Michelle represents the capitalist leech that is sucking our planet dry of its resources in the name of the almighty dollar. Teddy (Plemons) aims to correct this injustice by violent means. Together with his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) they abduct and torture Michelle until she agrees to take them to her leader, believing her to be an alien sent from the Andromeda galaxy to destroy Earth.
The most fascinating thing about this film is the mystery box that Lanthimos successfully places at the center of the story. Is Michelle an alien? This is where the acting really makes the rubber hit the road.
Stone and Plemons are so confident in their portrayals of the evil capitalist and paranoid conspiracy theorist that you truly lose sense of who is right and wrong. From the beginning of the movie, we’re told not to like Michelle. She’s an overconfident C-suite who wants the perception of changing her company’s image without putting in the actual work to achieve it.
Michelle’s confidence is a blindspot. When Michelle attempts to control the situation, it results in Teddy losing his temper. Eventually, her tactics turn fatal for Don setting the film’s third act in motion.
Teddy is a nearly unhinged employee of the corporation that Michelle works for. He goes to work, does a good job, looks out for his coworkers and tends to his bees. When Teddy clocks out of his duties for the day, that’s when the curtains are pulled back to reveal the duality of his character.
When the film enters its second act, Lanthimos forces us to change our opinion of Michelle and Teddy. Once Michelle is kidnapped, its hard to see her as evil. Likewise, it’s hard to see Teddy as a good person once the cuffs and clippers come out.
Lanthimos is a master at building tension. It’s established early that Teddy and Don have little idea what they’re doing. Or at least at first. We later find out that this isn’t Teddy’s first rodeo. Before the reveal, you’re left wondering if Michelle is going to push Teddy over the edge after being too confrontational to the point where a gun is brought in.
Any time Bugonia gives a hint of going in a certain direction, the film takes you down a different path. Perhaps the most admirable part of Bugonia is its ability to pull the rug out from under your expectations in a way that both makes sense and was teased earlier in the film.
On paper, the plot feels thin. The performances from Stone and Plemons keep you engaged and bought-in to the story. Up until the last minutes of the film you’ll be left wondering who to cheer for, and maybe that’s the point. In Bugonia, nobody wins.