Yorgos Lanthimos is back again this year with another feature in Bugonia. Lanthimos teams up for the first time with screenwriter Will Tracy, his second writing credit after 2022’s The Menu. Bugonia is inspired by the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet, directed and written by Jang Joon-hwan. That film follows a young man who believes his country’s leaders are actually toxic reptilian aliens sent down to launch a takeover of his beloved Earth. He decides to abduct them and forces the truth out on camera in his basement, which doubles as a film studio and torture chamber.
Bugonia follows this same plot, except the kidnappers broadcast their abduction on camera. Lanthimos and Tracy update the original film’s ideas to a more satirical take on our current world climate. The film tackles climate change, deforestation, technology ruining communication, fake news, echo chambers, and how humanity continues to let these things happen without thinking of the consequences. Bugonia paints a picture of how all of these things could cause the Earth to die at any given moment. It’s a heavy topic, but Lanthimos’s balance of tone is what helps this be more of a cautionary tale than a full-on downer.
Lanthimos is no stranger to heavy ideas, but in Bugonia, he makes these ideas easily digestible by using dark satirical elements. This is a full-blown dark comedy that works staggeringly well due in part to Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, each of whom gives some of the best performances you will see all year.
Stone and Plemons are no strangers to Lanthimos’s films. This is Plemons’ second feature with Yorgos, and it is Stone’s third feature since her Oscar-winning work in Poor Things (2023). There are many reasons that Yorgos continues to work with these actors and vice versa: They bring out the best in each other continuously.
Plemons is the main character of this story, but Stone, as a co-lead, gives a forceful and powerful performance that shows her range as an actress. She has a monologue near the beginning of the third act that encompasses this range of resourceful endearment, a prime example of why she is one of our best working actresses.
The same acclaim can be said for Plemons as well. We have never quite seen a performance like this from him, with the closest counterpart being his work in The Master (2012). Both of these performances see Plemons following certain ideologies and never wavering, no matter how much evidence is presented. I hope he and Stone continue to work together in the future because each time they have collaborated, it has been dynamite.
Outside of the performances, Bugonia is the most colorful of Lanthimos’s films in terms of grading. It’s his brightest film by far, and it helps immensely in the tone of the film. Most of the film is bold and in your face, and the same goes for the color. The different forms of cinematography from longtime collaborator of Lanthimos’s Robbie Ryan lend well to this use of color. Ryan’s sterile and stagnant framing of Stone contrasted with the chaotic and rambunctious framing of Plemons helps identify how different these characters are, but as the film goes on, these styles switch. We see how each character rubs off on the other as the different styles of cinematography converge, which was a great choice.
It’s these choices that make me realize that this is the most assured Lanthimos has been in the director’s chair. Each choice, each frame has a distinct purpose. It seems to be his most meticulous direction as well, considering we get a fair amount of information thrown at us, but it is easily digestible thanks to that direction.
Bugonia may not be Lanthimos’s best, but this is definitely his most timely entry into his filmography. He continues to grow as a filmmaker because his early, more in-your-face works are starting to combine with his late contemporary works in Kinds of Kindness (2024) and Bugonia. The first two acts of this film are contemporary talking pieces showing how good Plemons and Stone are, giving them monologues and set pieces that show how absurd yet real a situation like this could be. Then, the third act absolutely goes off the rails like we came to know from Lanthimos’s early work. It has the greatest shock scenes I’ve seen all year, and they feel earned. There are purposes to them as the film builds up to the simmering boil point of all the ideas coming to a head for a resounding and humbling conclusion.
Lanthimos’s latest is another beautiful entry into his great filmography. He continues to show why he is one of our greatest working directors, and Bugonia is no exception. He makes stories feel timely yet present, and that touch is something all movies need.
Review Courtesy of Jacob Diedenhofer
Feature Image Credit to Focus Features via The Philadelphia Film Society