{"id":22262,"date":"2025-11-08T10:32:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T09:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.loffmusic.com\/yorgos-lanthimos-bugonia-the-director-and-emma-stone-sign-an-apocalyptic-comedy-where-noise-sounds-louder-than-reason\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T10:26:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T09:26:41","slug":"yorgos-lanthimos-bugonia-the-director-and-emma-stone-sign-an-apocalyptic-comedy-where-noise-sounds-louder-than-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.loffmusic.com\/en\/yorgos-lanthimos-bugonia-the-director-and-emma-stone-sign-an-apocalyptic-comedy-where-noise-sounds-louder-than-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA, the director and Emma Stone sign an apocalyptic comedy where noise sounds louder than reason."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Greek director delivers his driest and most paranoid film, supported by a haunting soundtrack by Jerskin Fendrix that turns silence into menace.<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n

By LoffMusic Editorial Staff<\/em><\/p>\n\n

After the baroque exuberance of Poor Things<\/em>, Yorgos Lanthimos<\/strong> returns to his rougher roots. In Bugonia<\/em>, an adaptation of the South Korean film Save the Green Planet! (<\/em> 2003), the filmmaker dissects with a scalpel technological paranoia, media conspiracy and the fragility of human communication.The result: a dark, grotesque and deeply contemporary satire, starring Emma Stone<\/strong> and Jesse Plemons<\/strong>, where dialogue is a weapon and music, a battlefield. <\/p>\n\n

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The absurd as a mirror<\/h2>\n\n

Bugonia<\/em> begins as a kidnapping film and ends up as a study in misinformation and ego.Two paranoid young men – Plemons and Aidan Delbis – kidnap the head of a powerful biotech company (Stone), convinced that she is an alien sent to destroy the planet.In that delusional premise, Lanthimos finds fertile ground for his obsession with miscommunication.<\/p>\n\n

The director avoids general shots: the camera clings to faces, to looks, to discomfort.Everything happens in gestures. There is no empathy, only surgical observation. And what he shows is not pretty: a fractured, narcissistic society that no longer distinguishes between truth and spectacle. <\/p>\n\n

As The Guardian<\/em> wrote,<\/p>\n\n

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“Bugonia<\/em> is a cruel parable about the digital age, where insanity is no longer measured by what you believe, but by how many likes you get for believing it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

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Music as an invisible threat<\/h2>\n\n

The soundtrack, composed by Jerskin Fendrix<\/strong>, is one of the keys to the film.After his work on Poor Things<\/em> and Kinds of Kindness<\/em>, the British composer returns to collaborate with Lanthimos, but here he takes his style to a more claustrophobic extreme.<\/p>\n\n

Fendrix himself commented in Variety<\/em> that the director asked him for “four basic sensations: bees, basement, spaceship and contained fear.”From that premise emerged a score full of buzzing strings, dislocated percussion and electronic breaths<\/strong>, a mix reminiscent of both Gy\u00f6rgy Ligeti and Jonny Greenwood, but with a tone more biological than orchestral.<\/p>\n\n

According to IndieWire<\/em>,<\/p>\n\n

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” Bugonia’<\/em> s sound design and music are so invasive that at times you feel like the film is breathing down your neck.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Every pause, every silence, every creak reinforces the feeling of confinement. The music does not accompany; it locks you in with the characters<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

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Criticism and international reception<\/h2>\n\n

The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival 2025, has divided the critics, something usual in the Lanthimos universe.<\/p>\n\n

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  • Little White Lies<\/em> describes it as “an absurd, uncomfortable and fascinating bombshell”.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The Washington Post<\/em> calls it “a morally ambiguous piece of clockwork.”<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • On Metacritic<\/em>, it accumulates a 71\/100<\/strong>, with a consensus of “generally favorable”.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n

    Emma Stone’<\/strong> s performance – in her fourth collaboration with the director – has been widely praised. Rolling Stone<\/em> underlined that “Stone moves between martyr and monster, with an emotional precision that chills the blood”.<\/p>\n\n

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    A film that compels you to watch (and listen).<\/h2>\n\n

    Beyond its conspiratorial plot, Bugonia<\/em> works as an X-ray of the present<\/strong>.Lanthimos turns digital chaos into black comedy, and fear of algorithms into existential farce.Between nervous laughter and electronic buzzes, the film poses an uncomfortable question:<\/p>\n\n

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    “What happens when we no longer distinguish the human from the programmed?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

    And, although it offers no answer, the echo it leaves sounds as clear as the buzzing sound that opens its first scene.<\/p>\n\n

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    Bugonia<\/em> does not seek to please; it seeks to shake.It is cinema for those who enjoy risk and discomfort.A dramatic comedy as grotesque as it is lucid, where the music of Jerskin Fendrix works as a mirror of the mental noise of our era.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

    Lanthimos confirms that his cinema, halfway between cruelty and beauty, remains the most fertile ground of contemporary auteur cinema.<\/p>\n\n

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    “The apocalypse comes not with explosions, but with notifications.”<\/strong> And Bugonia<\/em> demonstrates this with surgical precision.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

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