Yorgos Lanthimos may well be a filmmaking weirdo, but he’s our filmmaking weirdo. He’s a director for the outcasts among us, a true outsider in an industry of conformity, and as much as his idiosyncratic style likely rubs some up the wrong way, Lanthimos’ inimitable brand of filmmaking eccentricity is as important now as it has ever been.
A clear student of master provocateurs like Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke, Lanthimos’ style exists to incite, yet there’s something far less forthright about his approach. Whether it’s the surrealist psychodrama of Dogtooth, the off-kilter black comedy of The Lobster, the period weirdness of The Favourite, or the oddball fantasy of Poor Things; Lanthimos’ brand of eccentric deadpan humour manages to somehow beckon you in while always keeping you at arm’s length.
It’s an overtly eccentric approach that may polarise opinion, yet that’s half the fun. However, when you finally reach the mainstream with such mad ball movie making methodology – as was the case after Poor Things hit the way it did – what comes next? Well, if Bugonia is anything to go by, you take that big wad of studio cash and keep doing your thing.
Believing that powerful pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is an alien from the Andromeda species hellbent on destroying Earth, embittered beekeeping conspiracy theorist Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis) attempt to save humanity by kidnapping her. Intending to interrogate Michelle to expose her nefarious planet destroying plan, the pair soon realise may not be quite what they seem.
As a filmmaker with such an aggressively idiosyncratic approach as Yorgos Lanthimos, the director’s rise to Hollywood prominence is nothing short of remarkable. While there was a lot to love with Lanthimos’ early work like Dogtooth and Alps, surely there are few that would’ve predicted that the director would go on to become one of the most beloved and bankable in town.
His unique, unconventional nature just feels so diametrically opposed to what works well within the American film industry, however, from his English language debut in 2015 with The Lobster to The Favourite to where we now stand with Bugonia, you can see a clear evolution in his filmmaking and a clear progression in his style, one that’s managed to retain its eccentricities while acquiring a far more mainstream polish along the way.
For all its overt eccentricities and hyper sexualised nature, with grand visuals and an expansive plot, Poor Things felt as close to a big genre blockbuster as we’re ever likely to get from Yorgos Lanthimos, and there are clear signs with Bugonia that he’s taken things a step further and is finally finding his mainstream groove. Make no mistake, Bugonia is an intensely weird film and far from your average studio tent pole, yet the decisions made with it by Lanthimos make it an accessible and engrossing watch in a way we haven’t quite seen before.
Blending everything from kidnap thriller, screwball comedy, and body horror, to off-beat sci-fi, social commentary, and existential drama, there are a lot of genres going on within Bugonia. Yet, while that sounds like a rather overwhelming experience, Lanthimos manages to balance it so well that it all comes out in one enjoyable and surprisingly easy to consume chunk.
Things start off in a fairly straightforward manner, and as we move through the first and second acts, it all feels surprisingly conventional, however, without wanting to dip into spoiler territory, let’s just say that things get pretty damn weird in Bugonia’s third act. That may all sound fairly standard for a Yorgos Lanthimos film, yet, after Bugonia’s (relatively) straight kidnap/revenge thriller opening acts, there are swings taken in the finale that go far beyond what we’ve become accustomed to from the director.
The result is a heady mix of genres and tones that will leave your head in a spin, yet, amidst the chaos, there’s a level of high concept entertainment on offer that feels like a new and exciting addition to Lanthimos’ filmmaking repertoire. Sure, some of the erratic swings taken mean it will struggle to attain true mainstream crossover appeal, however, the brash and bold cinematic entertainment on offer with Bugonia makes it the perfect full-blown follow-up to Poor Things.
Granted, Bugonia certainly isn’t perfect and not all the wild dice rolls and tonal shifts quite land, yet the blend of broad entertainment, appealing quirkiness, well-orchestrated drama, and impactful themes make it one of the director’s most satisfying, fully-rounded efforts to date; one that teases the potential for something even bigger for Yorgos Lanthimos in the near future.
As we enter the film’s final act, there are so many question marks hanging over it and so many potential avenues the plot could go down, however this is all part of the fun with Bugonia. With humour, heart, and heavy themes aplenty, this third act positively explodes and shows Lanthimos at both his most playful and dramatic and suggests that he has somehow found the perfect formula for working within the Hollywood mainstream without losing an ounce of his unique personality.
As it swings through genres with carefree abandon, you can really feel that Yorgos Lanthimos is not only enjoying himself, he’s finding his big movie groove in a way that not only makes for a highly entertaining watch but gives Bugonia’s cast the platform and the means to really lean into their performances.
Now what one might consider seasoned Yorgos performers, both Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons know precisely what the director is looking for from them, and neither disappoint as they juggle Bugonia’s maelstrom of tones, genres, textures, and absurdities with admirable deftness. While many of Lanthimos’ recent work has been of the ensemble variety, the scope of his cast with Bugonia is relatively restricted, meaning an awful lot of pressure rests on Plemons and Stone’s shoulders to deliver. And boy, do they deliver.
As Yorgos Lanthimos’ cinematic muse, Emma Stone appears almost telepathically connected to the director’s unique filmmaking sensibilities, and her confidence in the material shines through with Bugonia’s every scene. As such, while it’s certainly a tough tonal task to shift from ice cold corporate-type to vulnerable kidnap victim to – well, you’ll just have to watch to find out where else she goes – Stone takes it all in her stride with a performance that, while not quite hitting the heady heights of her Poor Things turn, is remarkable, nonetheless.
At this point, it’s almost impossible for Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos to miss together, and c is further proof of this, however, as good as Stone is here, it’s her co-star that really steals the show. Continuing where he left off with his remarkable performance in the less than remarkable, Kinds of Kindness (his previous Yorgos collaboration), Jesse Plemons absolutely dominates proceedings in his own unique, wholly peculiar way.
No longer the best kept secret in Hollywood, Plemons has now fully cemented himself as one of the finest performers in the game, and his presence here is what really pushes Bugonia to the next level. Full of ticks, twitches, vulnerability, and a truly terrifying demeanour that switches from placid to vicious and reprehensible in a heartbeat, Plemons walks a delicate line between sympathetic and monstrous that has you hanging on his every unhinged word.
Able to convey a creepiness and an awkward, uncomfortable aura that often belies his unassuming appearance, Plemons does unhinged oddball like no one else, and his Teddy Gatz is perhaps his finest work to date. There are certainly moments of levity in there, yet the real power of Plemons’ character here is just how terrifyingly straight he plays it, all while folding in a multitude of other emotions and character quirks that ebb and flow with an intense volatility to make this a performance that is, much like the rest of Bugonia, thoroughly captivating and utterly impossible to shake off.
Kidnap thriller, oddball comedy, freaky body horror, offbeat sci-fi, societal commentary, existential drama. Even by Yorgos Lanthimos standards, there’s a lot going on with Bugonia, yet somehow, between the incredible performances of its stars, the relatively approachable tone, and admirably bold plot swings, this is the director’s most mainstream and surprisingly accessible work to date.
