Displaying items by tag: Aidan Deblis

BUGONIA

US/Greece, 2025, 118 minutes, Colour.

Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Deblis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone.

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.

The film doesn’t exactly explain the meaning of the title, though it gives some visual hints in its focus on bees.  Bugonia refers to an ancient Greek and Roman belief that bees could spontaneously generate freshly life from the carcass of a young bull or cow.

The screenwriter, Will Tracy (touches of the bizarre with The Menu, The Regime) offers his comment: I think also, we just liked the ambiguity of the title as well. It kinda sounds like an insect, kinda sounds like a flower, kinda sounds alien, but also sounds like a place, maybe, that could be on Earth. It might also sound like an illness that someone might have. So, I think the non-specificity of it was also kind of attractive.

And it does start with a close-up of flowers, bees, and two cousins working the hives. And where it goes from there is quite unpredictable!

We are introduced to Teddy, conspiracy theorist par excellence, a striking performance from Jesse Plemons, straggly-looking and dressed, demanding the collaboration of his cousin (Aidan Deblis), setting up in his farmhouse basement quite an extraordinary IT communications centre – all in the aid of kidnapping and interrogating the CEO of a pharmaceutical company (Michelle), convinced that she is an alien, wanting her to admit it, torturing her for the confession, motivated by the illness of his mother and the use of experimental drugs to heal her.

Teddy also works during the day in the very ordinary role of packaging pharmaceuticals to be sent out to customers. He also has an old friend who is now in the police force, unfortunately trying to ingratiate himself in Teddy’s favour at quite the wrong time.

And, of course, there is Emma Stone who has had striking roles and an Oscar-winning performance working in Lanthimos’ films. She is an assured businesswoman, trying shrewdly to influence Teddy, but more skilful in her dealings with him, admitting, finally, as he wants, that she is an alien, subservient to her Emperor, to make contact with him in three days when there will be a lunar eclipse. Definitely the world of conspiracy theorists.

So, the main drama is in the interactions between Teddy and Michelle, his desperate rush to his mother’s bedside hoping for a cure, the sudden suspicion for the audience that Michelle is so convincing she could be an alien.

The film is based on a Korean film, How to Save the Planet, incorporating its critique of what humans are doing to the world, step by step towards its destruction, and opening up quite an extraordinary explanation of evolution as well as a different perspective on an apocalyptic future, and whether the world might end with a bang or, as T.S.Elliot suggested, with the equivalent of a whimper.

As with his other films, the director offers us strange combinations of the real and the absurd, and one extraordinary shock where the audience might find that, literally, the jaw drops (as it did for this reviewer).

There is a appointment irony with the use of the final song, Where have all the flowers gone…? And the haunting refrain into the credits, When will they ever learn, and the music then stops.

1. The explanations for the title? Flowers, bees, a town, a planet…?
2. The adaptation of a Korean film and its message about saving the planet? With some melodramatic, absurdist, takes on the theme?
3. The work of the director, ironies, his working with the stars in other films? This achievement? The visual style, the pounding score, the use of songs?
4. The opening, flowers, pollen and nectar, Teddy and Don going to work with the bees? The later discussion about bees, apiaries, construction and destruction? New life from rotting flesh?
5. The portrait of Teddy, Jesse Plemons’ performance, age, look, clothes, cycling to work, at the headquarters, the parcels, the conversations? The revelation about the story of his mother, the experiments, in hospital, the failure of the experiment, his visit to his mother, thinking that he was healing her, her death? The impact, his desperately not wanting Michelle to name his mother? His angers?
6. Teddy and his relationship with Don, Don and the actor on the spectrum, the performance, believing Teddy, trying to raise questions, put down, the capture of Michelle, on guard, with the rifle? The discussions with Michelle, her playing on his psychology, his wanting to escape – and the suddenness of his shooting himself?
7. Teddy, conspiracy theories, his science, construction of his centre, his belief in aliens, that Michelle was an alien, out to destroy the humans? Working for her, his mother and the hospital, abducting her?
8. Michelle, and Emma Stone’s performance, CEO, at home, exercise, medication and the contrast with Teddy and his tablets? Her lifestyle, manner, with her staff? Abducted?
9. In the cellar, her head shaved because have provided for communications, the lotion, bound, over the period, the discussions, the interrogation, getting her to admit that she was an alien, different attempts, recorded, played back, and finally deciding to play along with Teddy, the explanations, the Emperor, the whole background of evolution over the millennia, human evolution, failures, the possibility of saving humanity, the Emperor beginning to think humanity was not worth saving?
10. The screenplay, the audience not thinking that Michelle was an alien, but in her discussions, the screenplay even making the audience wonder whether she really was an alien?
11. Casey, police, babysitting Teddy, wanting friendship, coming to the house, coming in, suspicions, the discussions about the abduction, going out to the fields, Teddy killing him?
12. The buildup to the climax, Teddy and his desperation, cycling to the hospital and back, filling his mother with the antifreeze? His power over Michelle, her leading him on, the promise that he would meet the Emperor, going to headquarters, her injuries and limping, the wig, greeting people, his having the rifle, accompanying her?
13. Her explanation of the closet, the entry to the portal? His believing her, wanting to go? The explosives? Her shrewdness, his going into the closet, her looking in, the explosion?
14. The fact that Michelle was an alien, going to the Emperor, the alien creatures, their appearances, clothing, the final judgement against humanity?
15. The collage of all the deaths, human life suddenly stopping wherever they were, the pathos of the world ending so quietly? And the animals surviving? Where have all the flowers gone? When will they ever learn?