Yorgos Lanthimos is not really a hot and cold director no. Luca Guadagnino is a hot and cold director. Even the not great Yorgos films have something interesting in them to make them worthy of your time: hot and lukewarm, basically, but he also roller coasters too. 2025 has Italy in freefall, but Greece flying high: Yorgos’s Bugonia is one of the best of the year, seeing the wonderfully strange director and US resident since the 2010s find the weirdos in his newfound home.
The “weirdos” he found are people on polar opposite ends of the capitalist society. On the bottom are Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis), cousin beekeepers living in a very rural house somewhere in flyover country. Teddy convinces his simple minded cousin that Earth has been invaded and overruled by aliens. He hopes to prove this by “capturing” – read, kidnapping – a higher rung on the capitalist ladder: Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), CEO of Auxolith, an Amazon like corporation, and convincing Fuller to contact the mothership to negotiate the aliens’ retreat from Earth.
What a devilish little trick Yorgos and writer Will Tracy pull off here. The meat of the movie is the battle of wills between Teddy and Michelle. A simpler director would just make Teddy look like a maniac here, but Tracy’s script and Plemons’s controlled rage performance really humanize the “crazy”, pointing out how people like Teddy get to their conclusions usually from some deep seeded fear/anger losing control of their own lives. That’s part one. The turn is Michelle Fuller. I once tried a standup bit about talking to a first date using only corporate jargon. I guess Lanthimos and Tracy were at my set, because they basically ran with the premise. As cuckoo as Teddy sounds, hearing Michelle communicate like she’s in a business meeting going “let’s address this,” “please continue this conversation”, and “I understand you, I have a degree in psychology” over and over again shows how condescending and inhumane corporate speak really is. Jesse Plemons makes sure Teddy is the figure you hate the most in Bugonia, but Yorgos has his back, and doesn’t let executive types like Michelle off the hook either.
This failure to communicate sets the tone for Bugonia, and drives the movie’s momentum. The tension builds and builds until either Teddy or Michelle snaps, or poor, sweet, simple, Don gets manipulated into doing something drastic. The twists and turns are wonderfully staged and executed, leaving the audience eagerly awaiting the next interrogation. Personally I think Lanthimos had the right ending at about 1 hour, 40 minutes, and left what happens after as ambiguous. The choice he makes with the final 20 is going to rub a bunch of people the wrong way (me included), but I will say this: the director pulls ZERO punches with where he takes Bugonia. It’s as bold and crazy as his two leads, and left my mouth wide open as the credits started to roll.
I know I did a Luca Guadagnino/Yorgos Lanthimos comparison at the beginning of this review. But after Bugonia, I think Yorgos is on the Nihilistic Wes Anderson train. I look forward to the thespian-off the two directors have for each new release with “their guys.” Emma vs. Benicio! Jesse vs. Riz Ahmed! Willem Dafoe vs. Himself! Clearly the headliner, the last one.