Movie review
Yorgos Lanthimos’ particular brand of dark comedy can be an acquired taste, and his latest, the gritty conspiracy thriller “Bugonia,” pushes that taste to the limit. There’s no quirky visual beauty to disappear into, as in his period pieces “The Favourite” and “Poor Things”; instead, there are three grim characters and an unrelentingly depressing worldview. It’s absolutely watchable, and at times mesmerizing — Lanthimos is, as always, brilliant with actors — but I left wanting to shake it off.
Taking place at a time similar to the present day, “Bugonia” has at its center two cousins, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis), obsessed with conspiracy theories. Inept but determined, the two kidnap Michelle (Emma Stone), the wealthy CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and imprison her in their basement, believing her to be an alien. (“Bugonia” is based loosely on the 2003 Korean sci-fi comedy “Save the Green Planet!”) Much of the film is conversations between the three, as Michelle at first insists that she’s not an alien and then plays along, hoping to trick them into releasing her. Gradually we learn why Teddy and Don are alone in that big house, and what happened to make these two young men susceptible to such darkness.
Stone, in her fifth collaboration with Lanthimos (her most recent Oscar was for his “Poor Things”), works miracles with Michelle, who’s really quite awful: There’s a funny early scene at her office in which Michelle explains that it’s perfectly OK for employees to leave at 5:30, really it is, as long as their work is done. (“New era!” she barks, in corporate staccato.) She’s eerily calm about the kidnapping; this is a woman who knows how to talk her way out of things. When Teddy accuses her of having alien code all over her Instagram (not a sentence you hear every day), Michelle says smoothly, “Could we have a dialogue about this,” like she’s in a boardroom rather than chained up in a basement. Plemons finds something heartbreakingly broken in Teddy, who has buried a lifetime of pain somewhere very deep, and Delbis, a nonprofessional actor, is earnest and lovely as sweet, troubled Don, whose cousin is his only friend and his lifeline.
But despite the fine performances and inventive camera work, “Bugonia” lost me, somewhere around where Michelle was being tied up and tortured. Perhaps I’ve just reached my lifetime limit of women-in-captivity movies; perhaps Lanthimos’ particular brand of dark comedy feels too close to the bone right now. The final moments of “Bugonia” paint as grim a picture of humanity as you’ll see anywhere; it’s superbly crafted, to be sure, but it’s ice-cold at its core.
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