October 23, 2025
FILM: BUGONIA
DIRECTED BY: YORGOS LANTHIMOS
STARRING: JESSE PLEMONS, EMMA STONE, AIDAN DELBIS
RATING: 3 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Major film fans know the work of director Yorgos Lanthimos. Many of his projects have received Oscar nominations or wins from Dogtooth and The Lobster to The Favourite and Poor Things. With Bugonia, Lanthimos teams up again with Emma Stone, who appeared in the last two of these films, and Jesse Plemons who won the 2024 Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for Kinds of Kindness. Clearly, this is a hot team. Their stories and productions are usually impressive if not always the most commercial. That will likely apply to Bugonia. The excellent screenplay makes part of the film feel like a stage production with intense dialogue scenes and biting social ideas while also veering into territory that might make certain audiences uncomfortable – like a lot of Lanthimos’s work does.
Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, an employee of a large corporation run by the tough and powerful Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone.) Teddy and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle because Teddy thinks she is an alien and wants to speak to the emperor of her people. Michelle, of course, denies the accusation but can’t convince the cousins to let her go. We find out fairly early on that Teddy’s mother is currently unconscious and breathing through a tube due to an opioid addiction treatment gone wrong that was manufactured by the company. Teddy feels Michelle and her fellow aliens need to leave earth to stop it from destroying the human race.
The whole premise is sold to us well by Plemons as Teddy because he is so convincing as a man who sincerely believes in this theory. His overall demeanor and shaggy hair suggest a man who has been hyper focused on this one cause for a long time. He pulls his cousin, whom he calls his only friend, along for his committed ride. Their treatment of Michelle is at times intense and brutal (including shaving Michelle’s long auburn locks.) However, Michelle is not a pushover and she believably fights Teddy with her intellect and physical strength. To say that Plemons and Stone are good in the roles would be an understatement. Both continue to deliver interesting and superb performances that take us places we haven’t seen them go before.
With her bald head, and the harsh lighting Lanthimos shines on it, Stone as Michelle looks like she could be from out of this world, or at least created by man, similar to female characters in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein. Stone’s facial expressions are subtle while also deliberate and calculating.
Obviously, there’s something kind of funny about Teddy’s obsessive beliefs surrounding Michelle. It sounds ridiculous and not all that unfamiliar from the conspiracy theories people follow on social media today. Lanthimos initially seems to be commenting on the apparent mind control the creators of such theories have on our culture today even though they might not have any basis in reality or research. However, the arc of this script doesn’t exactly follow in the direction we might expect. Without giving anything away, he and co-writer Jang Joon-hwan develop a highly original narrative and conclusion that might prove disappointing to some viewers. I’ve no doubt this might affect the word of mouth associated with the film thus limiting its potential to be a major commercial hit.
Still, in addition to the performances and provocative themes, the film also boasts some great technical elements. The production design smartly emphasizes the contrast in Michelle’s home and corporate offices to Teddy’s very modest home. There are also some interesting music choices sprinkled throughout the film. During a couple of scenes, for instance, Teddy briskly rides his bike through town and the music score becomes reminiscent of the music associated with Miss Gulch/The witch in The Wizard of Oz. Because Teddy often comes across as a disturbed man ready to torture Michelle at a moment’s notice, the score at other times features what sounds like elements of Bernard Herrmann’s classic music from Psycho. The score in general is often highly melodramatic, similar to what we would have expected from other mid-20th Century Hollywood films.
Bugonia has some really interesting ideas. Even though I sat questioning how satisfied I was with what Lanthimos was saying and showing to us by the end of the film, he’s once again created something provocative that will make people talk.
Bugonia played at the Chicago International Film Festival. It opens in theaters this week.
FILM: BUGONIA
DIRECTED BY: YORGOS LANTHIMOS
STARRING: JESSE PLEMONS, EMMA STONE, AIDAN DELBIS
RATING: 3 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Major film fans know the work of director Yorgos Lanthimos. Many of his projects have received Oscar nominations or wins from Dogtooth and The Lobster to The Favourite and Poor Things. With Bugonia, Lanthimos teams up again with Emma Stone, who appeared in the last two of these films, and Jesse Plemons who won the 2024 Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for Kinds of Kindness. Clearly, this is a hot team. Their stories and productions are usually impressive if not always the most commercial. That will likely apply to Bugonia. The excellent screenplay makes part of the film feel like a stage production with intense dialogue scenes and biting social ideas while also veering into territory that might make certain audiences uncomfortable – like a lot of Lanthimos’s work does.
Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, an employee of a large corporation run by the tough and powerful Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone.) Teddy and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle because Teddy thinks she is an alien and wants to speak to the emperor of her people. Michelle, of course, denies the accusation but can’t convince the cousins to let her go. We find out fairly early on that Teddy’s mother is currently unconscious and breathing through a tube due to an opioid addiction treatment gone wrong that was manufactured by the company. Teddy feels Michelle and her fellow aliens need to leave earth to stop it from destroying the human race.
The whole premise is sold to us well by Plemons as Teddy because he is so convincing as a man who sincerely believes in this theory. His overall demeanor and shaggy hair suggest a man who has been hyper focused on this one cause for a long time. He pulls his cousin, whom he calls his only friend, along for his committed ride. Their treatment of Michelle is at times intense and brutal (including shaving Michelle’s long auburn locks.) However, Michelle is not a pushover and she believably fights Teddy with her intellect and physical strength. To say that Plemons and Stone are good in the roles would be an understatement. Both continue to deliver interesting and superb performances that take us places we haven’t seen them go before.
With her bald head, and the harsh lighting Lanthimos shines on it, Stone as Michelle looks like she could be from out of this world, or at least created by man, similar to female characters in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein. Stone’s facial expressions are subtle while also deliberate and calculating.
Obviously, there’s something kind of funny about Teddy’s obsessive beliefs surrounding Michelle. It sounds ridiculous and not all that unfamiliar from the conspiracy theories people follow on social media today. Lanthimos initially seems to be commenting on the apparent mind control the creators of such theories have on our culture today even though they might not have any basis in reality or research. However, the arc of this script doesn’t exactly follow in the direction we might expect. Without giving anything away, he and co-writer Jang Joon-hwan develop a highly original narrative and conclusion that might prove disappointing to some viewers. I’ve no doubt this might affect the word of mouth associated with the film thus limiting its potential to be a major commercial hit.
Still, in addition to the performances and provocative themes, the film also boasts some great technical elements. The production design smartly emphasizes the contrast in Michelle’s home and corporate offices to Teddy’s very modest home. There are also some interesting music choices sprinkled throughout the film. During a couple of scenes, for instance, Teddy briskly rides his bike through town and the music score becomes reminiscent of the music associated with Miss Gulch/The witch in The Wizard of Oz. Because Teddy often comes across as a disturbed man ready to torture Michelle at a moment’s notice, the score at other times features what sounds like elements of Bernard Herrmann’s classic music from Psycho. The score in general is often highly melodramatic, similar to what we would have expected from other mid-20th Century Hollywood films.
Bugonia has some really interesting ideas. Even though I sat questioning how satisfied I was with what Lanthimos was saying and showing to us by the end of the film, he’s once again created something provocative that will make people talk.
Bugonia played at the Chicago International Film Festival. It opens in theaters this week.