Emma Stone's 'perverse' and gory new film stuns Venice Film Festival
The actor's latest collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia, had a star-studded premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it shocked and amazed audiences.
Emma Stone left film fans gasping and covering their eyes with her latest collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia, when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday, 28 August.
The movie, which is a remake of the South Korean film Save the Green Planet, is a gory thriller which sees wealthy business mogul Michelle (Stone) get kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists Teddy and Don (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis), who believe she is an alien. As tensions rise between the CEO and her captors, things start to take a dark turn in a way that has become Lanthimos' signature.
According to Variety, the shock factor of the film was felt during its Venice premiere, with audiences said to be shocked enough to cover their eyes in moments. While it was shocking, the film, which has been described as "perverse", received a rapturous 6-minute standing ovation from the audience.
Critics were not as surprised by Bugonia as the audience at Venice, it seems, as many remarked that it has its strengths and weaknesses.
The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney described the film as "a genre-hopping blast of suspense, sci-fi, paranoia and dark comedy" that works better than the director's previous film with Stone and Plemons, Kinds of Kindness, but is "by no means Lanthimos’ best work".
"Their new collaboration is more satisfying than that uneven and overlong puzzle box, not to mention more readily coherent as a narrative," the critic wrote. "But it does feel almost like a repertory company lark, dashed off between more ambitious projects, prompting the hope that the Greek director will scale up again soon."
However, Rooney remarked that the film will lack surprise for anyone familiar with the original: "In keeping with the Korean original, it’s far from subtle and often a bit silly, but Lanthimos can always be relied upon to serve up something weird and subversive."
Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons attend the red carpet of the movie Bugonia during the 82nd Venice Film Festival. (Getty Images)
Variety's Owen Gleiberman called the film "a heady and gripping experience" thanks to the performances laid out by Stone and Plemons.
The critic celebrated Stone's performance, in particular, writing: "Stone, as an actor, has often led with her empathy, and it’s that very quality that renders her cutthroat performance in Bugonia so ironically exquisite." Though it is Plemons, he writes, "who gives the film’s most extraordinary performance".
Gleiberman added: "Even as we’re giggling, or maybe just shell-shocked, the film transitions into something deeply cosmic and humane. It leaves us stunned by what happens to the world these two have been fighting over, by what a powerful and vulnerable place it is."
While for The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, Bugonia is a "macabre and amusing new film" from Lanthimos, that has strong performances and an exceptional finale "but frankly it’s a very, very long run-up to that big jump."
The critic wasn't as taken with the film as others, writing: "Bugonia is a very well made film, and while it is not true to say it is less than the sum of its parts, it is less than that final and very powerful part. Like Ari Aster’s recent film Eddington, it also shows how difficult it is to make internet conspiracy obsession interesting.
"For me, Bugonia doesn’t have the ingenuity and elegance of Lanthimos’s previous film Kinds of Kindness, nor the emotional generosity and audacity of his steampunk fantasia Poor Things. It’s a spiny, prickly, hothouse flower."
Time's Stephanie Zacharek described the film as "punishing", writing that while the "ridiculously over-the-top exploding-bodies gore" can be fun, "Lanthimos goes out of his way to amp up the story’s ugly, brutish qualities."
Remarking how strong the final moments are, like Bradshaw, Zacharek similarly said: "Lanthimos allows us the grace of that ending only after he’s put us through the wringer, maybe even boring us a little along the way."
Bugonia will premiere in UK cinemas on 7 November, 2025.