Bugonia

Tuesday afternoon, Sharon and I saw Bugonia at the Century Country Club Cinema. We are continuing our annual journey to see all of the films that might be nominated for an Oscar. As of today, GoldDerby currently has Bugonia with the tenth best odds to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Bugonia is an absurdist black comedy film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It is an English-language remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan. The film stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone. Delbis is autistic. Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos have collaborated on four feature films: The Favourite (2018); Poor Things (2023); Kinds of Kindness (2024), and; Bugonia (2025).

Teddy Gatz (Plemons), a conspiracy-obsessed beekeeper, and his intellectually-disabled cousin, Don (Delbis), kidnap Michelle Fuller (Stone), the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. They are convinced she is an alien disguised as a human. They hold her captive in their basement in a bizarre attempt to save Earth from an extraterrestrial plot.

Plemons and Stone's performances are very good. I wouldn't be surprised to see either of them nominated for an acting Oscar. Primarily due to the ending, I have mixed feelings about the movie. I think that the movie would have been better with a more understated ending. They could have accomplished the same thing without the cartoon characterizations at the end. I think that the movie is on the bubble for a Best Picture Oscar nomination. It will depend on how well a couple of movies released over the next couple months are received (e.g. Avatar - Fire and Ash and Wicked for Good).

"Bugonia" is a Greek word (βουγονία, also spelled "bougonia") that refers to an ancient Mediterranean rite or belief that bees spontaneously generate from the carcasses of dead animals, particularly oxen.