Begosh and begora, BUGONIA, is the bee’s knees in the hive of recent conspiracy theory pictures coming out of the Disunited States of Trumponia.
From Yorgos Lanthimos, the director of Poor Things and The Favourite, comes another completely out there, left of centre, blindsidingly brilliant psychological thriller that offers a pitch-black comic window into modern age of madness.
Provocative and subversive, this dead-eyed depiction of contemporary disconnect and dread follows two conspiracy obsessed young men, cousins Teddy and Don, as they burst out of their online rabbit holes and kidnap Michelle, a high-powered CEO of a pharmaceutical conglomerate they believe to be an alien who has come to destroy humankind.
Teddy, the ringleader, chains Michelle in the basement of their home, shaves her head and slathers her in alienation goo while interrogating her about intergalactic intrigue. As an amateur apiarist, he is convinced that earth is facing colony collapse disorder, a cosmic catastrophe with Michelle and her kind as catalyst.
Based on the South Korean film, Save the Green Planet by Jang Joon-hwan with a script by Will Tracy who served up the Ralph Fiennes starrer, The Menu, BUGONIA is Philip K. Dick-ensian, a delve into the only apparently real.
The three lead performances are dialled high with Emma Stone’s calibrated cool as Michelle contrasting Jesse Plemmon’s Teddy, a stew of fear and anger, simmering to boiling with inherent unpredictability, while newcomer Aidan Delbis fluctuates between fidelity and confusion.
The fine line between fantasy, figment, fact, and imagination, the fictions that fuel the fire of paranoia, cover-ups that provide the compost for conspiracy theories, the collision of myth and truth, are the fodder of this fine, mind boggling film.
A companion piece to Eddington and One Battle After Another, BUGONIA will leave you bug eyed, bee stung and jaw dropped.
