Emma Stone stars in dark comedy in new Venice tie-up with Lanthimos

VENICE: Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film “Bugonia”, which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival, presents a “funny and fucked up” vision of the contemporary world, its star Emma Stone said on Thursday.

Lanthimos and Stone have become one of the strongest director-actor duos in the movie industry and last joined forces in Venice in 2023 with their hit “Poor Things”, which won the main Golden Lion award, as well as four Oscars.

Their new film is a dark, comic thriller that offers a savage vision of our age of paranoia, delusion and decay.

“I think it is reflective of this point in time in our world, and is told in a way that I found really fascinating and moving, funny and fucked-up and alive,” Stone told reporters.

The thriller follows two conspiracy-driven cousins, played by Jesse Plemons and newcomer Aidan Delbis, who kidnap a powerful pharmaceutical CEO, portrayed by Stone, convinced she is an alien plotting humanity’s destruction.

As bizarre as the plot sounds, Lanthimos said his film was not a tale of a dystopian future but rather a mirror of present-day disconnection and disaster.

“Unfortunately, not much of the dystopia in this film is very fictional,” Lanthimos said.

“I don’t know how much time we have with everything that’s happening in the world, with technology, with AI, with wars, climate change and the denial of all these things.”

An English-language remake of South Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 “Save the Green Planet!”, the film questions whether there might be intelligent beings out in the universe interfering with life on Earth.

Stone said she didn’t believe we were alone. “So yes I’m coming out and saying it, I believe in aliens.”

The film puts huge physical demands on Stone, including having her hair shaved off as she lies unconscious. But the actor shrugged off having to go bald. “It’s like so much easier than any (other) hairstyle,” she said.

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Stone, who has collaborated with Lanthimos on at least five projects, said the frequent overlap of cast and crew on their films had fostered a rare sense of camaraderie.

“What it ends up feeling like is a really comforting and safe environment,” she said. “It does really feel like that when you’ve made so many things together, you’ve sort of been in those trenches together.”

“Bugonia” is one of 21 films competing for the prestigious Golden Lion prize, alongside works by Guillermo del Toro, Kathryn Bigelow and Jim Jarmusch. The festival runs through to September 6.