'Bugonia' review: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons shine in darkly surreal comedy

Waking up chained to a cot in a basement, Michelle Fuller, a pharmaceutical executive played by Emma Stone, faces her captor, a wretched-looking man named Teddy (Jesse Plemons). Though still half-drugged, Michelle realizes that Teddy doesn’t want money, doesn’t want fame.

He just wants her to admit she’s a space alien and take him to her Andromedan leader.

"I think that we maybe got off on the wrong foot," Michelle replies with a professional calm that masks growing terror. "And I would love to keep the conversation going."

So goes a pivotal moment in "Bugonia," another bleakly funny and occasionally gruesome comedy (if that’s the right word) from director Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s his fourth collaboration with Stone (including "Poor Things," which earned her an Oscar), his second with Plemons (following last year’s "Kinds of Kindness") and his first with screenwriter Will Tracy (HBO’s "Succession"). In past films, Lanthimos has been mostly concerned with love and sex, but here he makes a foray — in his characteristically surreal fashion — into politics.

For this basement is America, and Teddy and Michelle are stuck in it. He’s a low-paid gig worker whose anti-elitist conspiracy theories have subsumed his life; she’s the perfect target, a wealthy and famous female who goes with the progressive flow ("It’s not just diverse employees, it’s diverse thinking," she chirps in a corporate video). You can label him red and her blue if you like, but that would be missing the point. "Bugonia" is concerned with two people having an impossible conversation: One seems clearly insane, the other can’t get through and there’s no middle ground in sight.

"They did a hell of a job of it, but the tells are there," Teddy says, pointing to Michelle’s narrow feet and thick hair — obvious signs of Andromedan fakery. How can Michelle refute this? If you’ve ever argued with a staunch opponent over, say, vaccines or climate change, you’ll know how she feels. ("Bugonia" is based on a 2003 Korean film titled "Save the Green Planet.") For his part, Teddy knows how he sounds: "Alt right, alt light, leftist, Marxist, all those stupid badges," he says of his past political affiliations. "Until I discovered you."

Stone and Plemons carry the day here: Her Michelle is alternately haughty, humble and wily — all believable reactions to her plight — while he’s convincing as a man in the grips of an obsession. (Teddy is also a beekeeper, a motif that figures into the film's title.) Aidan Delbis, an actor with autism making his film debut, adds a note of tenderness as Don, Teddy’s puppyish helpmate and cousin, while Alicia Silverstone appears briefly as Teddy’s mother, whose connection to Michelle is only gradually revealed.

This being a Lanthimos film, it's probably no spoiler to say that things don’t end entirely happily. There will be no entente for Teddy and Michelle. So, what about the rest of us? If there’s a way out of our current political stalemate, you won’t find it in "Bugonia."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com