DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. In the new movie "Bugonia," which is now playing in theaters, Emma Stone stars as a high-powered CEO who gets kidnapped by a low-ranking employee played by Jesse Plemons, who believes she's an alien from outer space. It's the latest dark comedy from the filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, who previously directed Stone and Plemons in last year's "Kinds Of Kindness." Our film critic Justin Chang has this review of "Bugonia."
JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: As an admirer of the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, it gave me no pleasure to report that his 2024 film, "Kinds Of Kindness," was all kinds of lousy - a trio of stories about human cruelty, each one more wearying than the last. You couldn't fault the actors, though - not Emma Stone, a brilliant Lanthimos regular who won an Oscar for her role in his film "Poor Things," and not Jesse Plemons, a versatile addition to the director's regular company.
Now Stone and Plemons have reunited in Lanthimos' wickedly funny new psychological thriller, "Bugonia," which at times plays like a discarded fourth story from "Kinds Of Kindness" that was expanded into its own feature. "Bugonia" is actually a remake of another film, Jang Joon-hwan's low-budget thriller from 2003, "Save The Green Planet," which is now regarded by many as one of the most significant Korean movies of this century.
Although "Bugonia" is a bigger, more lavish production than "Save The Green Planet," it does preserve many of the same plot details. Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, a part-time beekeeper who also works in a warehouse owned by a major corporation that makes drugs and pesticides. He blames the company and its CEO, Michelle Fuller - that's Emma Stone girlbossing to the max - for their role in endangering bee colonies around the world. But Teddy's rage goes further. He claims that Michelle is an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy bent on destroying planet Earth. And so with the help of his cousin Don, played by Aidan Delbis, Teddy ambushes Michelle outside her home and knocks her out. When she comes to, she's tied up in the basement of Teddy's farmhouse and shaved bald for reasons that only her captor can explain.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BUGONIA")
EMMA STONE: (As Michelle) Where is my hair?
JESSE PLEMONS: (As Teddy) Your hair has been destroyed.
STONE: (As Michelle) You shaved off my hair?
PLEMONS: (As Teddy) Yes, we have shaved off your hair.
STONE: (As Michelle) Why have you shaved off my hair?
PLEMONS: (As Teddy) To prevent you from contacting your ship.
STONE: (As Michelle) My ship?
PLEMONS: (As Teddy) Your ship.
STONE: (As Michelle) What ship?
PLEMONS: (As Teddy) Your mother ship.
CHANG: Teddy demands that Michelle take him and Don to her leader. Michelle's response is startlingly cool and methodical. Rather than screaming or pleading for her life, she calmly explains that she isn't an alien and that Teddy and Don would be wise to let her go. Even when she's incapacitated, she seems unnervingly in control of the situation, and you begin to wonder fairly early on if Michelle really is from Andromeda.
Weirdly, the answer almost doesn't matter because there's always been something otherworldly about the way Lanthimos regards his characters. Watching one of his movies, like "Dogtooth" or "The Killing Of A Sacred Deer," is sort of like watching a strange behavioral experiment conducted by an extraterrestrial being. Even so, "Bugonia" doesn't have the staccato rhythms and bizarre non sequiturs of most Lanthimos movies. It was written by Will Tracy, a co-writer on the 2022 horror satire "The Menu," and the dialogue has a lucidity that sucks you in.
Teddy strains to be polite with Michelle at first, but he starts to unravel as her barbed, insinuating words get under his skin. The more Michelle talks, the more she backs Teddy into a corner, exposing layers of grief, trauma, bitterness and disillusionment, especially concerning politics. Teddy has been all over the ideological spectrum - alt-right, leftist, Marxist - but now shuns all labels, dismissing them as performative garbage. Michelle seems to share his cynicism. Or maybe she's just saying that to mess with him, in the same way that Lanthimos is messing with us.
Scene by scene, "Bugonia" keeps us guessing. Which of these two characters should we be more afraid of? Is Teddy just another crackpot conspiracy theorist, or might he be on to something? Plemons' tense, heartbreaking performance allows for both possibilities, and his psychological duet with Stone is riveting to watch. There are also haunting grace notes from newcomer Aidan Delbis, who is autistic and is playing an autistic person, Don, the one character here who seems completely guileless.
Like many Lanthimos movies, "Bugonia" teems with startling tonal shifts and sudden eruptions of violence. Yet it also feels like a more accessible object than he's made before - more of a clever product, perhaps, than a sui generis vision. It's a remake, after all, and a fairly faithful one at that. Where it differs most from its source material is in the way it looks. Where "Save The Green Planet" felt grotty and claustrophobic, "Bugonia," shot by the gifted cinematographer Robbie Ryan, is almost distractingly gorgeous. The final sequence in particular has a spooky, apocalyptic grandeur that left me in a state of near awe. Lanthimos may be something of an arthouse prankster, but even in his impish gaze, our endangered planet can still be a thing of beauty.
BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. On Monday's show, Richard Linklater, who made the films "Slacker," "Dazed And Confused," the "Before" trilogy and "Boyhood," talks about his two new films. "Blue Moon" is about lyricist Lorenz Hart. "Nouvelle Vague" is an homage to director Jean-Luc Godard and the making of his 1960 revolutionary French New Wave film "Breathless." Join us.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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