“How can you tell she’s an alien?” asks Don (Aidan Delbis, an impressive neuro-divergent actor) of his cousin Teddy (the excellent Jesse Plemons).
Yurgos Lanthimos’s gripping black comedy Bugonia (nothing to do with begonias, by the way, but a Greek word concerning bees’ ability to spontaneously generate from a cow’s carcass) is marvellously deranged, taking a conspiracy theory to its logical, or illogical, conclusion. The screenplay is adapted by Will Tracy (Succession; The Menu; The Regime) from Jang Joon-hwan’s film Save the Green Planet!. And Robbie Ryan’s cinematography using large-format VistaVision is wonderfully lush and immersive.
The woman who Teddy and Don – they’re beekeepers as well as conspiracy theorists – believe to be an Andromedan alien is Michelle Fuller, played by Emma Stone in her fifth collaboration with Lanthimos. It brings her together again with Plemons after Kinds of Kindness (2024).
She’s splendid as the glossy CEO of Auxolith, a pharmaceutical and pesticide company (pictured above). We see her click-clacking in her Louboutin heels along its metal and glass expanses and exercising complete control over her employees. She tells them they’re allowed to leave at 5.30 – she’s helming a kind, diverse new era – though if they’ve got work to do, well, it’s best to stay and finish it (I could have done with seeing more of Michelle at work). At home, she’s up before dawn to practice martial arts. Then she dons her LED mask, looking rather alien behind its red glow.
“I follow a very expensive anti-ageing programme,” she tells Teddy, who works as a packer in the Auxolith warehouse, and Don. This is after they’ve kidnapped and drugged her, shaved her head in the back of the car so she won’t be able to communicate with her mothership – “What mothership?” asks Michelle – covered her with anti-histamine lotion for similar reasons and shackled her in the basement of their ramshackle old house (the film is shot in High Wycombe, of all places, as well as Greece).
She puts up a good fight, initially, but Teddy’s beliefs are unshakeable. Don is less convinced but would do anything for his beloved cousin, even reluctantly agreeing to join him in chemical castration in order to "kill all the urges and be totally free". After going down the usual alt-right and alt-left rabbit holes, the pony-tailed, dishevelled Teddy has decided that “99 per cent of what’s called activism is really personal exhibitionism and brand maintenance” and that the Andromeda theory is what he should have been looking at all along. And these days, who’s to say he’s wrong?
Andromedans, he believes, have infiltrated the human race and are bringing about colony collapse disorder in bees – and humans – as well as killing his own mother (Alicia Silverstone, in a small role), who was part of an opioid clinical trial that has left her comatose in hospital (Auxolith is paying for her care). “I know what you are,” he tells her. He sees himself as the leader of human resistance and wants Michelle to broker a meeting with the Andromedan emperor before the lunar eclipse.
“You’re mentally ill,” responds Michelle, which doesn’t go down well. Teddy subjects her to electric shocks, which fills Don with horror and brings him to the verge of intervening. He’s not sure that Michelle is an alien. But she appears unscathed, even poised, in spite of screaming a lot. This is proof, thinks Teddy, that she shares blood with the emperor himself and he allows her to come upstairs to eat spaghetti and meatballs with them.
Meanwhile, a police manhunt for Michelle is obviously underway, and Teddy’s old babysitter, who abused him when he was a child, is the local sheriff (Stavros Halkias). He’s already flagged Teddy down as he cycles to work (pictured above) and tried to apologise for what he did to him, saying he gets such a “sad fucking feeling” when he sees the old house, but then turns up at the door. Michelle’s phone has pinged in the area. General mayhem ensues with a great deal of bloody violence as well as bee stings. There are poignant moments, such as when Don says to Michelle, “If you are an alien, can you take me away from here?”
Can Michelle convince Teddy to let her go? The denouement, though a little dragged out, is dark and gloriously unexpected. Heads roll. Where have all the flowers gone?, sung by Marlene Dietrich, provides a final, menacing flourish.
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