Reel Talk: Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons ignite in Yorgos Lanthimos’ darkly comic Bugonia

4 stars

Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Stavros Halkias

Rated: MA15+

In Cinemas: Now

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are the big-screen pairing you didn’t know you needed in your life.

In Bugonia, the latest oddity from Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, Stone and Plemons have serious chemistry.

And by “serious”, we’re talking about an unchecked exothermic reaction that releases the kind of energy you should consider wearing goggles to view safely.

Pressure affects chemical reactions, and there was certainly plenty of that as Lanthimos looked for a follow-up to his Oscar-winning hit, Poor Things.

Obviously, if you don’t count the weird triptych, Kinds Of Kindness, which felt like the Milky Way of movies; that is, one you can have between meals without ruining your appetite.

Stone won an Oscar for her leading role in Poor Things, but also impressed in Kinds Of Kindness, as did Plemons, so it’s no surprise Lanthimos thought there was more meat on the bone with these two.

But to realise the potential of this pairing he took an unexpected turn with Bugonia (if anything the OTHER Greek Freak does can be called “unexpected”) and opted to remake the little-known 2003 Korean flick, Save The Green Planet!

Just like that film, Bugonia is a darkly comic sci-fi fantasy, about a man (Plemons) who kidnaps someone (Stone), believing that person to be an alien from the Andromeda galaxy.

With a script adapted by Will Tracy, whose credits include The Menu and Succession, Lanthimos’ version changes some details but honours most of the beats of the original.

Plemons plays Teddy, a conspiracy theorist who becomes convinced the Big Pharma CEO he works for is an extra-terrestrial and abducts her in the hope of negotiating a peace treaty with her alien emperor on behalf of humanity.

The Oscar-nominated Plemons is almost unrecognisable in the role, and not just because he’s shed 25kg over the past year.

The dude commits to a role, and this is one of his finest performances to date.

It’s hard to imagine anyone matching that energy better than Stone, whose arc in this film starts at imperious corporate overlord, moves through every shade of terror and eventually lands somewhere bonkers.

If we’re being honest, Bugonia is a lesser Lanthimos work compared with Poor Things and The Favourite (to be fair, those are extremely high bars to clear), but it’s as artistically impressive as the director’s 2015 cult film, The Lobster.

Only more disturbing. Like, considerably more.

But, as always, the key is to lean into Lanthimos’ vision, as challenging as that may occasionally be, because the pay-off is one of the best films you’ll see all year.