In his new film, Lanthimos offers an intense three-person play full of paranoia, evil humor and surprises.
When Emma Stone and Giorgos Lanthimos first met, it was a fateful moment in film history. Now “Bugonia”, the result of their fourth collaboration, is being launched. The title isn't a flower name (although “Begonia” wouldn't sound bad either), but a satirical sci-fi thriller.
Scene from “Bugonia”
Remake of “Safe the Green Planet!”
Stone plays a powerful pharmaceutical company boss who is kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons) because he believes the woman is an alien who threatens humanity. What sounds like a typical Lanthimos is actually not, because this time the director is using a different film. With “Bugonia” he is releasing the remake of the bitter science fiction comedy “Save the Green Planet!” by the South Korean Jang Joon-hwan from 2003. The story is largely retained – apart from a few important changes (in the original, for example, the kidnap victim was a man and the accomplice was a woman), and only the setting is moved to present-day America.
Scene from “Bugonia”
Hair as a means of communication
Teddy is an underprivileged worker and beekeeper with a very particular worldview. After his mother is severely damaged by an experimental drug, he realizes that there is actually an alien conspiracy aimed at destroying our species. He now wants to prevent this together with his underexposed cousin (Aidan Delbis).
The two men grab the supposed alien Michelle Fuller and hold her in the basement of a house in the woods of Georgia. The first thing they do is shave her head bald, because it is well known that aliens communicate through their hair. Since the kidnapped woman turns out to be very uncooperative and doesn't say what Teddy wants to hear, he resorts to increasingly drastic measures to force the truth out of Michelle and soon there is real blood flowing.
Scene from “Bugonia”
Great cast and “blindly composed” music
The bald-headed Emma Stone already dominates the screen with her battered presence, and this time a very emaciated Plemons proves to be her worthy opponent. He plays the paranoid hillbilly with madness behind his eyes in a frighteningly believable way and delivers a few memorable outings; In fact, he also reveals himself to be a highly tragic figure. A real discovery is the sensational newcomer Aidan Delbis, who will hopefully not be cast in the role of a somewhat backward young man in the future, as he certainly has a lot more to offer.
The fact that the film gets under our skin so much is due in large part to the music by Lanthimo's favorite composer, Jerskin Fendrix. This time he had to act on cue, so to speak, because the director didn't show him the script or parts of the finished film, but only gave him the four terms “bees, cellar, spaceship and bald Emma” as inspiration for composition. The result sounds even more astonishing.
Scene from “Bugonia”
Unforgettable finale
While the South Korean original often changes genres in a matter of seconds and has everything from hard torture horror to crazy slapstick interludes, Lanthimos takes a more relaxed approach and offers a dialogue-heavy three-person piece for long stretches. Towards the end, however, the violence increases and what begins as a kidnapping crime thriller becomes an oppressive parable about human misconduct, which culminates in an unforgettable finale – to the tune of “Tell me where the flowers are?”. The bees with whom the film begins and ends have no problem finding an answer to this question.
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