If you think Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos pushed the envelope with “Poor Things,” wait until you see “Bugonia.”
Two years after the duo came to the Lido with their previous Oscar winner “Poor Things,” they returned with a perverse thriller about a female CEO (Stone) who is kidnapped and tortured by one of her employees (Jesse Plemons), on the suspicion of being an alien. “Bugonia” features push-the-envelope scenes between captor and captive, leaving the Venice audience covering their eyes and gasping at the film’s more tense moments.
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World premiering in competition, the sci-fi dark comedy — an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean film “Save the Green Planet” — earned a six-minute standing ovation. At the film’s conclusion, the festival crowd showered “Bugonia” with rapturous adoration, showing that this Italian audience was up for what Lanthimos was serving.
Stone, Plemons, Alicia Silverstone and the rest of the cast took in the applause, bowing multiple times. Stone even teared up with her husband Dave McCary clapping behind her. The Oscar-winning actress then laughed through misty eyes as she looked at a sign inside the theater that asked, “Emma will you dance with me?”
In “Bugonia,” Stone plays the high-powered CEO of a major company who is kidnapped by two conspiracy-obsessed young men who are convinced she’s an alien intent on destroying Earth. The film, Stone’s fourth feature with Lanthimos, also stars Silverstone, Aidan Delbis and Stavros Halkias.
The Focus Features film sees Lanthimos once again team with Irish powerhouse producer Element Pictures, who this time co-produces alongside Ari Aster via his Square Peg banner, Miky Lee of CJ ENM Films and Television and Stone through her Fruit Tree outfit. Will Tracy adapted the original screenplay, which saw the central character gender swapped from a man to a woman.
Lanthimos was last in Venice in 2023 with the hugely successful comic fantasy “Poor Things,” which won four Oscars including Stone’s second best actress trophy. She also starred in Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” which earned her an Oscar nomination, and 2024’s “Kinds of Kindness,” which starred Plemons. Earlier this year, Stone was in Cannes, this time alongside Aster as director for the filmmaker’s all-star contemporary Western “Eddington.”
After its premiere on the Lido, “Bugonia” will debut in limited release U.S. on Oct. 24, before expanding nationwide on Oct. 31.
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