Yorgos Lanthimos Delivers a Darkly Comic Fairytale That Hits Uncomfortably Close to Home
Yorgos Lanthimos and his band of merry actors are back to spin a Grimm fairytale that’s disturbingly close to reality.
Lanthimos’s work isn’t for everyone. However, it can be confidently said that if you weren’t a fan of Poor Things but kind of liked Kinds of Kindness, then you may enjoy this more accessible tale. Lanthimos really said, You want reality? Well, open wide. Jesse Plemons plays an isolated, khaki-clad conspiracy theorist who kidnaps Emma Stone’s stylish head of a local pharmaceutical company. Plemons is convinced Stone is an alien sent to infiltrate Earth, and is responsible for not only his mother’s illness but all the world’s ills. Because apparently, women have time to do it all.
Bugonia is laced with Lanthimos’s signature absurdist tone. From Stone’s character, who wants the “life” part of “work-life balance” to be silent (not that she said that of course, but you know…), to the bee suit clad buddy kidnap by Plemons and Aidan Delbis (playing his cousin), it’s all distinctly Lanthimos. You’ll laugh at the black comedy, but when events heat up and tip into violence, the laughter stops. You can almost hear Lanthimos asking if we’re enjoying our reality yet.
Plemons is the film’s central figure, and his performance is so convincing you’re not quite sure if he’s acting. Maybe, just maybe, he really does sit in the basement of his mansion, anonymously posting on Reddit threads and calling into talk radio to rant about women, children, and immigrants being at fault for – insert issue here. His treatment of Stone is deeply unsettling because he truly believes in his mission (for Stone to take him to her leader) despite evidence. The tighter he tries to hold onto his truth the harder he asserts control over Stone who he perceives to have power and therefore needs to be made powerless.
Many women will be able to relate with a shiver as they watch Stone’s placating victim. Her attempt to defuse the situation – her kidnapping at the hands of a mad man who will go to electrifying lengths to prove his theories – is a disturbing reminder that often times women have to make themselves smaller in order to survive a misogynistic world, even when they’re in positions of wealth or power. It’s a bitter pill to choke on.
Many actors have one great film or series together, and never reunite regardless of chemistry. But Lanthimos’s insistence on an old-Hollywood-style roster of recurring collaborators once again pays off. Stone and Plemons, once again create a claustrophobic rhythm that is both theatrical and grounded.
This film takes place over a few locations within a small town, but Jerskin Fendrix operatic score gives is grandeur. The yellow walls of a fading farmhouse in a forgotten town in anywhere USA is made to feel as though it sits on the precipice of alien communication despite the absurdity of it all.
The conclusion, though predictable was still surprising in its thematic choice. There is a lot to be said in Bugonia about women in power, the unfair targeted blame of ‘illegal aliens’ and the side effects of living in an online echo chamber. After the intensity of time spent with a character we ridicule and fear, a man who is an all too real caricature of a reality we’re wary of – the ending tips the scales back from reality to the absurd. It’s Lanthimos being Lanthimos however in order for that to work the ending became an altar on which the sacrificial lamb of the entire film was laid. Whether it works is up for debate.
What did you think of Bugonia?
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