Bugonia's slurry of rage is a soothing balm
I couldn’t believe the size of my grin when the lights turned on and the credits ran during a Bugonia screening that Tim Onion invited me to.1 Was I still on Earth? Was I still living in the timeline where half of the White House got bulldozed earlier in the day? Was I still on the planet where people regularly called evil good, and good evil?
Inversion and contrast are the tools actors Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons and director Yorgos Lanthimos use to play me in their dark comedy. The absurdist plot, borne of online conspiracy theory forums, whack podcasts, and fever dreams, asked me to cozy up to a destitute man and his weirder cousin living on the rural hem of suburban America. It wanted me to shiver at the callous, cold, floor-to-ceiling glass surrounds of biotech CEO Michelle Fuller—a character who may be my cousin with a shared last name.
With the stage set, a flywheel of power shifts is set off when Michelle is kidnapped. Slapstick moments force some of these transitions; others happen when circumstances induce cringe of all shapes and sizes. Authority figures find themselves supplicating those who endured the aftermath of their power. These fast-paced cycles place every character on a horizontal, centrifugal plane: facing one another, fighting the burden of their own guilt, and swirling around trying to find a way to get out and land on top.
Some characters pluck themselves out of the dizzying plane in an act of self-determination. Other characters are simply acted upon; each culminating moment is a blip, apparently the logical result of the circumstances before we linger and observe the aftermath. Even in moments weighed down with moral substance, outcomes are fleet-footed. Some even made me giggle.
The end takes us back to cozy surroundings, where a different form of disbelief sets in as the slurry of Bugonia’s centrifuge is molded into an entirely new universe. This story isn’t tied up in a just-so bow—its elements are simply recast and given a new start.
I left Bugonia much in the way I leave from restaurants in France: satiated—but not stuffed—and uncertain if I’ll come back one day for something else. Maybe I tap into the same self-determination as these characters to pluck myself out of our real-life American dystopia. Even if I remain stuck on our star-spangled centrifuge, at least Bugonia made me smile.