Film Review Bugonia: Class Struggle Against Aliens

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Times of political extremism are boom times for biting satire. After Paul Thomas Anderson took aim at the intergenerational struggle of left versus right in "One Battle After Another," Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos is now following suit. In Bugonia, he pits two representatives of their classes against each other.

On the one hand, there is Michelle (Emma Stone) as a hypocritical CEO who elevates diversity to a company credo and suggests employees finish work at 5:30 PM – naturally, only if they have nothing important to do.

On the other hand, there is the gig worker and amateur beekeeper Teddy (Jesse Plemons), who is upset about chemical companies because they poison the bees. He blames Michelle's company for the fate of his mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone). Ever since she took a medication from Michelle's company, Sandy has been in a coma. Teddy is sure: Michelle comes from the Andromeda galaxy and has come to Earth to subjugate humanity and exploit the planet.

What follows is a chamber play lasting just under two hours, in which Teddy and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) lock Michelle in their homemade people's prison and interrogate her. She is supposed to admit that she is an alien and bring Teddy to her boss in the spaceship during the next lunar eclipse so that he can negotiate the future of the Earth with him.

But how do you convince a torturer with delusions of grandeur when they interpret every counter-proof as confirmation of their worldview? Women accused of witchcraft in the Middle Ages faced the same problem with the Catholic Church. Teddy sinks deeper and deeper into it. So that he and Don can concentrate on their mission, they are to cease all sexual activity – including with themselves – and make themselves infertile.

First, the two shave Michelle's head so she can't use these antennas to signal her spaceship for help. Meanwhile, the prisoner, educated at elite universities, rummages through her learned persuasion strategies and tries to win Don over to her side.

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The Absurdities of Class Struggle

After "The Favourite," "Poor Things," and "Kinds of Kindness," "Bugonia" is already the fourth collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone – the current dream team of surreal film. Where Wes Andersson is frozen in his aesthetic corset, Lanthimos constantly invents new stories and narrative forms: from a baroque comedy about political intrigue, a Frankenstein parody on feminism, an episodic sado-maso triptych on power and control, to a psychological chamber play about class struggle, delusion, and reality. It is as challenging as it is entertaining for viewers tired of the Hollywood-esque uniformity.

Thanks to its close ensemble work, it can react to current social issues and discourses in short production cycles and surprise viewers again and again. Lanthimos thus forms an antipode to the exhausted franchise cinema of the big Hollywood studios. Stone and Plemons deliver outstanding performances, and the screenplay consistently stays on topic without drifting into an overly crude ketchup orgy like in "The Substance" at the end.