Although Lanthimos has moved away from the stilted hyper-stylised hallmarks which announced him to the filmmaking world at large, his preoccupation with misfits and oddballs endures. Limp-haired, grubby and isolated, Teddy has become entirely consumed by his search for answers, mired by anger and pain following the slow deterioration of his mother following an opioid addiction and disastrous clinical trial which has left her in a coma. Usually softly spoken despite his outlandish propensity towards violent outbursts adds an animalistic quality; Plemons is consistently diverting and haunted, eerily calm until he suddenly, shockingly isn’t. At his side, newcomer Aidan Delbis more than holds his own, imbuing Don with a tragic tenderness, exploitable because of the vulnerability which makes him such a welcome contrast from his cousin. (This alteration from Jang’s text – in which the kidnappers were a couple – adds a welcome emotional resonance.)
Bugonia is also far less oblique than Lanthimos’ previous works, particularly his collaborations with Efthymis Filippou, and at times Tracy’s credentials as a former Succession writer and Editor-in-Chief of ‘The Onion’ are unmistakable. It’s very much a contemporary film, with Teddy gamely noting he’d tried “the alt-right, alt-light, leftist and Marxist” ideologies before settling on his alien conspiracy. Yet what might have been cloying even a couple of years ago seems starkly real now, as western society fragments further into isolationism and individuals become radicalised by their own suffering and misdirected anger.
Despite Lanthimos and Tracy’s past form for unbridled cynicism, there’s a strangled sort of sadness about Bugonia; a tangible pang of regret that humanity can’t seem to help fucking itself over, time and time again. This is no screed against the dangers of online conspiracy rabbit holes (though the warning is implicit) or the many competing crises fighting for attention on a daily basis, but rather a lament for humanity’s own “suicidal gene” as Michelle puts it, and the parasitic nature of capitalism that exploits our biological vulnerabilities.
And even beyond the question of ‘Is she or isn’t she?’ about Michelle’s taxonomy, Bugonia is undoubtedly a sci-fi film, with Fendrix pulling in favours from John Williams’ classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind score and Price aping the apiary in his extraterrestrial design. Ryan too – one of contemporary cinema’s most talented cinematographers – is firing on all cylinders, with the earthy greens, oranges and yellows that saturate Teddy and Don’s cluttered cottage a sharp contrast from the cool otherworldly sterility of Michelle’s glass mansion, like a spaceship dropped in suburban Georgia.
For the curious, the film’s title refers to a concept in ancient Greek mythology that suggested bees were born from the carcasses of dead cows in an act of spontaneous creation. While this is not exactly the case (and there’s some debate over whether it was a metaphorical or literal concept anyway), the ancient Greeks weren’t entirely off base; from death comes life, if not bees directly. Perhaps, given all the misery humanity has wrought over thousands of years, the best planet Earth can hope for is a swift end to the suffering and a chance to start again.