BFI London Film Festival 2025 | Movie Review: "Bugonia" Is Another Lanthimos/Stone Triumph
12/12 ForReel Score | 5/5 Stars
Scorsese & DiCaprio; Almodovar & Cruz; Coppola & Dunst; and now, Lanthomis & Stone. With Bugonia being the fourth collaborative feature film between Greek-born Yorgos Lanthimos and American-darling Emma Stone, it feels quite natural to place their partnership among the great creative pairings of contemporary cinema. Each subsequent project is vastly different to the last, the throughline that binds them together being the unifying thread of sinister Lanthimos weirdness. Bugonia is no different.
Image courtesy of Focus Features
In Bugonia, we find a multi-millionaire CEO (played by Stone) unceremoniously kidnapped by a pair of radicalised conspiracy theorists, played by another Lanthimos regular Jesse Plemons and newcomer Aidan Delbis, who believe in their kidnapping that they are saving humanity; Plemons’ ‘own research’ has led him to believe that Stone is in fact an alien hiding in plain sight amongst the mere mortals. And thus ensues what is essentially a three-hander between the players, set primarily within the confines of the house wherein the crime has taken place.
All three of the main cast are firing on all cylinders in Bugonia. Electrifying scenes of dialogue are punctuated by the dazzling menace behind Plemons’ eyes, who has never operated on a more frightening level. He’s walking danger, a live fuse about to ignite, his unshackling from the confines of reality creating a truly terrifying creature whose capabilities seemingly know no limits. And yet underneath it all, there’s a crippling sadness. This is a man unbound - a desperate creature driven to insanity by the ruthless everyday violence of capitalism. His co-conspirator, played gut-wrenchingly by Aidan Delbis, is just as vulnerable. As dangerous as men like these two are - and they are indeed a profound danger to both themselves and society at large - it’s clear that Lantimos has a degree of empathy for them both. Civilised society has abandoned them completely, and so they have abandoned it in return. At the very least, Bugonia will make you think.
And then there is Stone. Her performance is, as we have come to expect from one of the greatest of her generation (the greatest?), simply brilliant. She plays the brutishly charming high-powered CEO of the opening act with fantastic vigour, clearly delighting in delivering such wickedly corporate jargon with faux-sincerity, before the rug is pulled from underneath her for the rest of the film’s running time and the table is flipped. All influence is lost; she’s no longer the most powerful person in the room; corporate jargon and insincerity only serves to accelerate her impending death. Since Stone and Lanthimos established their union in 2018 with The Favourite, she has starred in multiple films under his helmship - under his guidance, she continues to receive some of the richest, most daring roles of her career.
The filmmaking and craftsmanship on display in Bugonia is exquisite across the board. Every frame is constructed like a painting, bursting with bloody colours, deep reds and smoldering oranges, whilst the music ticks along like a bomb conspiring to create an ugly sense of impending unease. The script is snappy; the film’s two hours zip by quickly.
Although this marks the fourth collaboration between Stone and Lanthimos, their creative chemistry feels anything but tired. If anything, it seems to grow more potent with each project. Bugonia proves that together they continue to capture lightning in a bottle, and perhaps most exciting of all is the sense that there are still many more collaborations to come.