Words by JANE CROWTHER

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Last year Yorgos Lanthimos bowed the divisive Kinds Of Kindness starring Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, an imprenetrable triptych that dared one to like it. At this year’s Venice Film Festival the trio debuted a linear, grimly funny and ultimately profound cosmic comedy that explores the horrors of humanity and the perception of powerful women. 

‘Bugonia’ – though not explained by the film – is an ancient Mediterranean ritual where the carcass of an ox was believed to be able to recreate bee life. A death of a greater beast was required to give life to the pollinating, essential apinae. Lanthimos’ film begins with the bees, as Plemons’ Georgia warehouse worker and amateur apiarist, Teddy, describes their integral role in the world and the need to stop the poison that is killing them. As we watch Teddy prep himself and his sweet cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis, delightful) for the event they’re planning in their squalid farmhouse it becomes apparent that the duo subscribe to web conspiracy theories, are emotionally damaged by Teddy’s opioid-abusing mother (Alicia Silverstone) now being in a coma after a medical trial, and are intent on kidnapping big pharma CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone). Believing Fuller to be both responsible for the stasis of Teddy’s Mom and an alien from the Andromedea galaxy, the duo hope to save humanity with their plan – comedically doing yoga on filthy towels, shopping for Jennifer Aniston masks at Goodwill and chemically castrating themselves in order to be ‘neurologically free’. 

Fuller is a precise businesswoman who complains about too much use of the word diversity in a diversity training video and mandates a 5.30pm clock-off time for her workers while also reminding them of the need to meet quotas. She wakes at 4.30am, trains ferociously, wears a stiletto-heeled daily uniform and appears to have no private life – an alien MO to the societal expectations of feminity. When she’s kidnapped by the duo (in a laugh-out-loud physical comedy sequence) and tied up in their basement she continually, coolly, asks for ‘dialogue’. And that’s what Lanthimos provides, as Teddy and Michelle verbally negotiate, power shifting forwards and backwards, audience belief in the truth flip-flopping with every turn. Is Teddy a delusional crackpot with abandonment issues? Or has this random man actually got a point?

Based on the 2003 film from South Korea, Save the Green Planet!, this is nonetheless a Lanthimos film, so darkness creeps into every facet of the process like the black mould seeping across Teddy’s kitchen ceiling. Teddy may not get his ‘news from the news’, but he is complex, bright and riddled with heartbreaking trauma (seen in weird monochrome flashbacks and hinted at by the local sheriff). Donny is driven by love and a need to escape his life, his compassion tempering Teddy’s more ruthless instincts as they torture Michelle. There’s an element of Ed Gein and some shocking blood splatter moments. Throughout though, there is humour and humanity; Plemons has never been better as the product of broken America while Stone’s large eyes (enhanced by a shaved head) and machine-gun cadence convince as both heartless CEO and credible ET. And the more dialogue the two engage in the more an audience is drawn in – not only to the ideological duel that demands a viewer take a stance, but to larger ideas of environmentalism, global accountancy and the sins of man. By the time the final reel is playing soundtracked by Peter, Paul and Mary’s plaintive ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ you have to agree with the refrain and sentiment; ‘when will they ever learn?’

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Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES
Bugonia premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and is in cinema’s now