Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone‘s doom-laden black comedy-thriller Bugonia stupefied and delighted the Venice Film Festival on Thursday night, drawing a rousing six-minute standing ovation after its world premiere inside the Italian water city’s Sala Grande cinema. From their perch on the theater’s balcony, Lanthimos, Stone and co-stars Jessie Plemons and Aidan Delbis joined hands and bowed to the crowd in unison as the lengthy applause wound down. Throughout the film’s two-hour runtime, the Venice premiere crowd alternated between stunned silence and bouts of laughter in reaction to the story’s “explosive violence, bursts of slapstick physical comedy and satirical jabs,” as The Hollywood Reporter’s chief critic summed up the film’s “weird twists” in a rave review.
Bugonia finds Stone starring alongside another Lanthimos collaborator in Plemons and fellow cast members Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias and Alicia Silverstone. A remake of Korean director Jang Joon Hwan’s 2001 cult classic Save the Green Planet!, Lanthimos’s film follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
The Focus Features release is one of the more hotly anticipated titles here on the Lido as it marks yet another reteaming of Lanthimos and his muse following their critically acclaimed Poor Things. That film won four Oscars, including a second best actress prize for Stone, and best achievement in production design for James Price, Shona Heath and Zsusza Mihalek, costume design for Holly Waddington and makeup and hairstyling for Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston. Bugonia follows a more recent partnership, Kinds of Kindness, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to divide critics and audiences and receive far less love at the box office. Bugonia could soon mark a return to mainstream embrace for the duo, thanks to its shocking premise, powerful performances and zeitgeist-skewering themes and flourishes.
The 82nd Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.
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