Bugonia: Emma Stone back with regular collaborators for black-comedy fun
Emma Stone in a scene from Bugonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
When Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos first worked together on in 2018, a beautiful creative collaboration was born. Since then, the pair have reunited on several projects, including in 2023, which earned Stone her second Academy Award for Best Actress.
Their latest collaboration, offers a darkly comic glimpse into the modern age of conspiracy theories and paranoia. Stone, 36, who also serves as a producer on the film, stars as Michelle, a ruthless CEO of a pharmaceutical company that manufactures drugs and pesticides.
A remake of the 2003 Korean cult classic the story follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men, Teddy and Don, played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis, who kidnap Michelle, convinced she is an alien sent to destroy humanity. After chaining her in a basement and coming face-to-face with their supposed enemy, the two sides, the tinfoil-hat basement dwellers and the steely, soulless corporate executive, soon find themselves locked in a battle as viscerally unpredictable as it is unexpectedly moving.
Lanthimos, 52, explains that although the film delves into the world of conspiracy theories, these ideas are simply the jumping-off point for a deeper narrative. “I think the idea of conspiracy theories is just a starting point,” the Greek filmmaker says of a film that was made with his longterm Irish collaborators Element Pictures.
“It’s a way to explore how people function in our day and age, how they think, how they form communities, groups, and relationships. It’s about observing the ways we enclose ourselves in bubbles, struggle to break out of them, and often fail to see the bubbles that others live within.”
He adds that he found it fascinating to bring characters from different worlds together. “I guess, finally, it’s about bringing these two groups together, the characters that Jesse and Emma play in the film and just putting them in a room to see what happens,” Lanthimos explains. “What unfolds when these two very different kinds of people actually meet, talk it out, and try to understand each other? And where does that lead?”
Stone, who shaved her head for the role, says that re-collaborating with Lanthimos and the rest of the crew helped her feel completely uninhibited in this performance.
“I think that’s one of the greatest things about it,” Stone says. “So many of the crew members are people we’ve worked with before, and Jesse and I had collaborated previously as well. It just feels like a really trusted, wonderful, fun, and safe space, a place where you can go to all these different, challenging places with confidence.” Stone, who delivers another incredibly physical performance in this film, says she loves using her body as an actress.
“I think the physicality for me is a real joy, walking, dancing, and all those forms of expression are really fun,” Stone explains. “In this film, there was a lot of that kind of fight intention, but when it’s choreographed and we figure it out scene by scene, it can almost feel like a dance.”
Plemons, 37, who has also collaborated with Lanthimos and Stone in the 2024 dark comedy describes his character Teddy as a symbol for societal pain and rage.
“There are always tons of different sources of inspiration and references,” Plemons says. “What I really enjoyed about Teddy is that, to me, he’s like a symbol, not necessarily just of our times, but you could certainly look at him that way. He’s a raw expression of society’s underside, damaged, full of pain, trauma, and rage. But what I really latched onto was his perception of himself. Who he truly wants to be is a hero.
“I know it sounds strange, given everything Teddy does, but there’s something very childlike about this idealistic hero’s quest he’s on. It was so much fun to explore all the complexities within that character.”
Plemons says his character has been dealt a tough hand in life. “He’s got a mother that was a part of this trial of opioid drug treatment that left her in a coma, and he just desperately wants to help, but he’s gotten a little lost along the way.”
In much of the action takes place in Teddy’s basement, where Michelle is held captive. The basement was part of a purpose-built house in the English countryside, where the cast filmed for six weeks.
“The house and the basement became a very important character,” Plemons says. “It always helps when you look around and there’s nothing that distracts you, nothing, even unconsciously, that makes you notice a shortcut or think, ‘Oh, they’ll never see this.’ There was none of that in this house. Everywhere you looked, everything had been considered, and the crew really poured themselves into it.”
Teddy’s basement in Lanthimos explains, is a contained environment that functions almost like a twisted science experiment, throwing its “lab rats” into a pool of anxieties, fears, and the absurdities of modern life.
But the experiment soon becomes a fun-house mirror, reflecting not only Teddy, Don, and Michelle, the subjects in question, but also us as viewers.
“By limiting the environment in which this conflict takes place, we enhance the focus on the characters and what they represent, but also reveal that what appears obvious in the beginning might not be true,” Lanthimos explains. “The film slowly reveals layers and layers of complexity in all of the characters, making whoever is watching the film rethink the biases they might have.”
- is in cinemas from Friday, October 31
