Rating: 7/10
After Emma Stone became a two-time Oscar winner with Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist period piece “Poor Things,” the win seemed to mark a turning point for her career. Pivoting out of the superhero roles and studio comedies that made her a household name, Stone has moved into a harsher, more abrasive suite of roles, and she’s never been better.
“Bugonia” is Stone’s fourth subsequent collaboration with Lanthimos, and one of her most jarring transformations yet — physical and otherwise. Stone plays Michelle Fuller, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Auxolith, a company so soulless and stock it’ll undoubtedly hit home for anybody tired of corporate circling back and touching base.
Opposite Michelle is Teddy Gatz, played by Jesse Plemons. Teddy is Michelle’s polar opposite, a reclusive conspiracy theorist with a disturbing violent streak and an unshakeable belief that Earth is under attack by an unseen alien race: the Andromedans.
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While Teddy’s bizarre explanation of Andromedan customs is a blatantly comic moment for the character, it still carries a hint of underlying menace. While Teddy is completely disillusioned with modern life, he finds meaning in his fringe conspiracy beliefs, calling his musty basement the “Headquarters of the Human Resistance.”
Teddy is desperate to find some scapegoat for the evils and failings evident in his day-to-day life, and his sights fall on Michelle. Convincing himself and his cousin Don that Michelle is a high-ranking Andromedan official, the pair kidnap her and hold her hostage as leverage against their shadowy and unexplained opponents.
Stone delivers a career-best performance in her most cramped and barren conditions, tapping into a nastier aspect of her skillset only seen yet with projects like “Eddington” or “The Curse.” Shorn bald and chained to a ratty mattress, Michelle has no leverage other than her supposed Andromedan connections. Even in her brief interactions with Don, played deftly by newcomer Aidan Delbis, Michelle’s attempts at escape are poorly masked at best.
“Bugonia’s” second act is a showcase for its writing, a series of close encounters between the three figures as each one tries to ascertain the true nature of the others. For every inch Michelle gains with either of her captors, a new wrench is thrown into the story, from overly friendly police to Teddy’s self-imposed deadline of an upcoming lunar eclipse. Each new piece of information we get from the movie redefines its characters entirely, either bringing a sudden grimness to its lightest moments or cutting through the darkness with levity.
Where “Bugonia” could be any straightforward escape thriller, Lanthimos and Stone work with screenwriter Will Tracy to craft something much more thorny. Teddy has a layered history and a much more personal mission than his kidnapping would initially suggest, and Michelle’s work with Auxolith is equally questionable. While there’s a clear perpetrator and victim in this kidnapping, the dynamic between Michelle and Teddy evolves from scene to scene, leaving the viewer wondering who they even want to root for.
This turn for Stone is a fascinating one in contrast to her earlier work, but the performances in “Bugonia” are some of film’s best in recent years. Stone made herself known with raunchy comedies like “Superbad” or “Easy A,” and a character as steely and cold as Michelle hits a completely different register. While corporate kidnapping and crumbling American infrastructure are to blame for the film’s conflicts, Stone and Plemons are the engine of “Bugonia’s” action, and they’ve never been more thrilling to watch.
