If you think Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos pushed the envelope with “Poor Things,” wait until you see “Bugonia.”
Two years after the duo came to the Lido with their previous Oscar winner, “Poor Things,” they returned with a perverse thriller about a female CEO (Stone) who is kidnapped and tortured by one of her employees (Jesse Plemons), on the suspicion of being an alien. “Bugonia” features push-the-envelope scenes between captor and captive, leaving the Venice audience covering their eyes and gasping at the film’s more tense moments.
At the film’s conclusion, the festival crowd showered “Bugonia” with rapturous adoration, earning a six-minute standing ovation and showing that this Italian audience was up for what Lanthimos was serving. Stone, Plemons, Lanthimos and the rest of the cast, including Alicia Silverstone, took in the applause while bowing multiple times. Stone, with her husband Dave McCary clapping behind her, even teared up and then laughed through misty eyes as she looked at a sign inside the theater that asked, “Emma, will you dance with me?”
Earlier on this rainy Thursday night, Stone and Plemons walked the red carpet before entering the Sala Grande Theatre. They dutifully posed for selfies with — and even signed some autographs for — the hordes of fans who gathered in the dreary weather in hopes of catching a glimpse at the stars. The crowd was particularly enthusiastic to see Stone, loudly chanting her name in unison until she made her way over to the barricades to snap a few photos with them.
“Bugonia,” an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean film “Save the Green Planet,” is the fourth collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone following “Poor Things,” “The Favourite” and “Kinds of Kindness.” Two of those films earned Stone a best actress win at the Oscars. Could “Bugonia” be lucky No. 3?
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