Teddy (as played by Jesse Plemons): “Greetings! Welcome to the headquarters of The Human Resistance. Your hair has been destroyed to prevent you from contacting your ship.”
It’s a wall-to-wall dark comedy fest so if you don’t like awkwardly laughing at the expense of characters suffering cruel and unusual punishment then this is not for you. Confused, bound, and bald Emma Stone slathered in lotion turns out to be hilarious.
This was my most anticipated film of the year since I’m a massive stan of Yorgos Lanthimos, specifically “Dogtooth” and “Kinds of Kindness.” The comedy outweighs the moral messaging if I am to compare to the previously mentioned films. Regardless, I really love the paranoia and naturalism themes at play, specifically colony collapse in bumble-bee systems, vitriol against pharmaceutical companies, and misanthropic environmental justice.
Script & Score:
Despite maladjusted expectations, I had a very fun outing with this deranged comedy thriller! I’d say Will Tracy’s script is better here than 2022’s “The Menu” given the bizarre set-pieces are much more memorable, though both highlight humanistic suffering in an elegantly absurd way. Also, I’m a sucker for basement horror like “Barbarian” from that same year. Notably, the black-&-white flashbacks in “Bugonia” were beautifully surreal. The imagery of acupuncture needles for opioids was so affecting, I’m still thinking of Alicia Silverstone as a balloon. I just wish Yorgos would do an entire film using that surrealist visual language. It’s too bad that this third back-to-back feature has him burned out and taking a break from filmmaking.
The orchestral music can feel a bit jarringly over-dramatic yet thematically, it’s in atonal harmony with the heightened paranoia on display and imbues the film with a touch of whimsy. It makes a lot of sense that Jerskin Fendrix was instructed to make the score based on four words “bees, basement, spaceship, and Emily-bald” without actually seeing the film.
Performances:
The performances are the strongest element of the film. They’re all so believably complex that I think the audience in my showing confused the uncomfortably comedic schadenfreude for immersive drama. Stavros Halkias was a convincingly comedic, creepy, coconut cake craving cop. Aidan Delbis did a superb job as Don, playing a timid assistant reluctantly held hostage by compassion as his friend’s last emotional anchor to reality. Jesse Plemons plays it extra awkward and unhinged as the compellingly detached conspiratorial lunatic, Teddy, who draws red circles on everything but might bee on to something? He’s scary-funny given his unhinged tone and out-of-this-world justification for violence. Emma Stone’s girlboss turned petrified performance adds an explosive chemistry. She played to her strengths as her character does her best to escape from Teddy and Don, while uncovering as to why she is held captive.
Final Thoughts:
“Sweet Dreams are made of bees” lmao, those meme lyrics from Eurythmics’ song were playing in my head while watching “Bugonia” since it plays at the start of Yorgos’ previous feature “Kinds of Kindness” (2023). To my surprise, the title of this film finally made sense of an odd image at the end of Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970), a corpse comprised entirely of bumble-bees:
Bugonia: [byoo-goh-nee-uh] • greek (n.) A ritual based on the belief that bees were spontaneously (equivocally) generated from a cow’s carcass.
Overall, that ending was gorgeous and satisfyingly hilarious after an endurance test of tension. Now that I’m home, the movie won’t stop buzzing around in the flower of my mind. I’m glad to bee in this big bubble echo chamber with all of you. ^3^
I particularly loved the credits being several minutes of meditative, serene nature sounds with a light thunderstorm towards the end. It was so tranquil to listen to the mix of rain and birds chirping with strangers in the dark.
