movie review: bugonia

Movie review: Bugonia

Although the possibility of alien life looms over proceedings in the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, The Favorite), it’s alienation that informs the dynamics. In this remake of the 2003 Korean sci-fi comedy, Save The Green Planet, the maximalist slapstick of the original is traded for a psychologically-intense battle of wills. 

The opening scenes show the morning routine of Teddy (Jesse Plemons), and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), contrasted with that of Michelle (Emma Stone). The former are working class and living in relative squalor, while the latter is an affluent healthcare CEO. While all parties are working on themselves, two of them are doing press ups in the dirt, the other has a personal trainer and hi tech lifestyle gadgets. 

Teddy and Don are shaping up to kidnap Michelle, convinced that she is an extraterrestrial being from Andromeda, who has caused medical harm to both Teddy’s mother specifically (via corporate malpractice), and the human race in general (via alien experimentation). They do so, and hold her captive in their basement, a situation that takes up most of the run time. 

Whether or not Michelle grew up 2.5 light years away, the difficulty of even basic communication is immediately apparent. Teddy has mostly withdrawn from society, and talks with anxious urgency as he fulfills his life’s work of setting up a meeting with the Andromedans. Michelle is steeped in neoliberal, workplace jargon, pleading for “a dialogue” as she is strapped into terrifying homemade monitoring devices. They talk over each other, never acknowledging the other’s stated reality. 

Tension mounts as the police start to show up. The officer is coincidentally an old babysitter of Teddy’s (Stavros Halkias) who wants to address some unspecified, shared personal trauma as he makes his enquiries. With Teddy occupied, Michelle starts to manipulate the emotionally-juvenile Don, and the kidnapping pair are forced into ever-more desperate measures as their plan starts to fall apart, and a bleak ending becomes increasingly inevitable. 

The three-handed, play-like scenes in the basement are dramatically enthralling, with Plemmons, Delbis and Stone all posting up award-bating performances. As the characters continue to frustrate each other, we’re given an allegory via Teddy’s bees. Environmental factors can lay waste to any hive, so if language has broken down and the world no longer has any shared meaning, does that mean colony collapse for human civilization? Is an existential alien threat any more damaging than our own societal implosion? 

Fans of Lanthimos will sense a slight change in cinematic timbre with Bugonia. His usual removed, stylized sensibilities are tempered somewhat. He needs us to at least somewhat relate to Michelle (and Teddy and Don to a lesser extent), and so there’s an artistic compromise of a more naturalistic approach to the acting. 

Your willingness to buy into the ending will likely dictate how highly you rate the third film in as many years from the director. The humor is being mined in some pretty dark corners - which is classic Lanthimos -  but without his usual box of stylized tricks, it feels more raw. If humans can’t even communicate with each other, what are the chances of a unified front against an alien aggressor, real or imagined, to save this green planet? (PO)

Bugonia is playing across the city.