Bugonia, the story of a conspiracy nut who kidnaps a business mogul and demands that she confess to her true alien identity, features the ingenious twist that, other than the alien stuff, most of what the guy says actually makes good sense. Even the alien stuff seems worth at least hearing out: is this soulless, corporate-speaking, community-wrecking woman really a human being? The movie’s finale takes that tension to its logical conclusion, which will curdle the experience for many. But it had to be so. Consider that Teddy exits with his head crashing against Michelle’s, signaling that what she’s about to enact will be from his mind, his thoughts. Those final images, then, aren’t a literal episode but rather the rendered worldview of this traumatized, lonely, and oddly perceptive man: humanity keeled over, its lifeforce gone, its machines humming pointlessly—all at a touch from our billionaire overlords. And the one saving grace is the authentic, disturbing hope of the resigned apocalyptist: that maybe the bees, at least, will thrive when we’re gone. Funny, unusual, and, most of all, sad, Bugonia is Yorgos Lanthimos’s crowning provocation—one of the most characteristic, salient films of the decade thus far.
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