{"id":234587,"date":"2025-10-30T19:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T19:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/234587\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T19:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T19:46:10","slug":"bugonia-review-a-bald-emma-stone-dazzles-in-yorgos-lanthimoss-timely-heartbreaking-comic-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/234587\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugonia review \u2013 A bald Emma Stone dazzles in Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s timely, heartbreaking comic satire"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Bugonia is one of the best films in recent memory to capture what it feels like to be alive right now. Because of that, it is Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s darkest and most timely work<\/a>. Here he\u2019s joined forces with new collaborator Will Tracy, the former editor-in-chief of satire site The Onion and a writer on the similarly cutthroat series Succession. Tracy, then, lives at the centre of the great circus show that is contemporary America, and when he\u2019s paired with Lanthimos\u2019s trademark deadpan<\/a>, we\u2019re delivered a true alchemical wonder: violent, absurd, current, fantastical, shrewd, and unexpectedly heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

The film it\u2019s adapted from, Jang Joon Hwan\u2019s Save the Green Planet! (2003), was always meant to feel at least a little outrageous. Yet it doesn\u2019t take much from Tracy and Lanthimos to make its premise \u2013 a conspiracy theorist kidnaps a CEO, convinced they\u2019re an alien \u2013 uncomfortably plausible in our real-life landscape of internet rabbit holes, loneliness epidemics, and AI-induced psychosis.<\/p>\n

At present, the world feels like the punchline to a joke someone would make on their deathbed, and the fact that no one knows whether to laugh or cry about it is an integral part of why everyone seems to be losing their mind. Lanthimos makes sure his film plays that way, too. Take, for example, his and Tracy\u2019s choice to make the CEO here a woman, Michelle Fuller, played by the director\u2019s thespian go-to, Emma Stone. She\u2019s the head of a pharmaceutical company her kidnapper Teddy (Jesse Plemons<\/a>) blames for, among other things, the decline of the bee population. <\/p>\n

She represents performative ethics at their most slickly sinister, declaring that her workers are now free to leave at 5.30pm (\u201cnew culture, no more unpleasant incidents!\u201d) \u2013 of course, that is, unless there\u2019s work to be finished. So, you don\u2019t exactly want to believe her sneering invocations around the \u201cpoliticised optics\u201d of her imprisonment. And when Teddy shaves her head and slaps antihistamine cream all over her body (to dampen the extraterrestrial neurotransmitters, you see), you want to laugh at how she looks like a fumbled attempt at an Uncle Fester costume.<\/p>\n

And yet, as much as Bugonia keeps you aware that Michelle has always weaponised her gender in order to maintain a portrait of innocence, Stone will still flash up these small, disorientating little moments of humanity (or extraterrestriality, perhaps?). She and Lanthimos are an ideal match, because she can push for the new and the wild \u2013 from a Frankenstein\u2019s monster remix to a bald, alleged alien \u2013 all while maintaining a tight control over tone, both dramatically and comedically.<\/p>\n

\"EmmaEmma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s \u2018Bugonia\u2019 (Focus Features)<\/p>\n

The same is true of Plemons\u2019s Teddy, who speaks in the slow, deliberate manner of someone who\u2019s extensively rehearsed their personality. He insists on his \u201chumanist principles\u201d, yet still we see something deeply frightening start to emerge \u2013 is this really a righteous crusade, or an excuse to inflict patriarchal violence? We\u2019re on a moral seesaw here, aptly accompanied by the Stravinsky-esque detonations of Jerskin Fendrix\u2019s score.<\/p>\n

At the centre of it all is Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy\u2019s cousin, who\u2019s been roped in as co-conspirator. He\u2019s an autistic character written with complexity and nuance, and played \u2013 in what is a stark rarity \u2013 by an autistic actor. It\u2019s hinted that Don has been abandoned by his family; that Teddy is really the only person he\u2019s ever felt safe with. What happens, then, when his view of Teddy is challenged? Delbis plays the anguish beautifully. You can practically see the world being ripped out from under him.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s been argued that Lanthimos harbours active disdain for other people, Don reminds us that there\u2019s a poignant streak of empathy to be found in even the most nihilistic of his stories. Hope, in Bugonia, is mostly lost. But not entirely.<\/p>\n

Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone. Cert 15, 118 mins.<\/p>\n

\u2018Bugonia\u2019 is in cinemas from 31 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-234587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}