Bugonia (15) |Close-Up Film Review

Anyone who is concerned about the conservation of the planet will realise the importance of saving the bees from threatened destruction.   

But apiarist Teddy does go a bit over the top in Begonia.   It is however a film from Yorgos Lanthimos – his fourth collaboration with Emma Stone, who stars and is also one of the producers – so we know both to expect the unexpected and that your delicate sensibilities won’t be respected.  The title by the way refers to an ancient belief that bees were generated from a cow’s carcass, though that’s one thing we don’t see.

Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is a bee keeper whose bees are mysteriously dying. He believes it’s all down to pharmaceutical company CEO Michelle (Stone), who in his conspiracy theory mind isn’t a human being but an alien from Andromeda, who’s out to eliminate not only the bees but the whole human race.  So with the help of his amiable but slow witted brother Don (Aidan Delbis, he plans to kidnap her and force her to call off the cull, before her mother ship arrives come the next lunar eclipse. 

When we first see Michelle, we realise she’s a pretty tough cookie.  Up at 4 am to exercise, popping pills and energy food, then off to work in a classic power suit and killer heels and a ruthless bitch once she gets to the office.

The brothers manage to kidnap her, knock her out with her own company’s dope and shave off her long hair, which they believe, is what she uses to communicate with her fellows on the home planet.  They then chain her to a bed and Teddy beats her up, mentally and sometimes physically.  Michelle though is a clever woman – and with her constantly taunting red mouth, fierce eyes and now shaven head she does indeed sometimes look rather alien.

Plemons, who was terrifying as the homicidal maniac in combat uniform in last year’s Alex Garland film Civil War, is here alternately scary and rather sad – he has previous form with Michelle over this mother (Alicia Silverstone)  who’s now in a coma after taking dodgy medication produced by Michelle’s company.  And though brother Don might appear to be on the slow side, he later shows he has a mind of his own with tragic and shocking results.

So is this sci fi, is it dark comedy or is it a warning to humanity to mend our ways?   It’s certainly gripping, shockingly violent in places, blackly comic and has an end sequence, which  may well take your breath away.  Without giving too much away though, the bees survive and flourish.  So that’s alright then.