‘Lies’: Lanthimos’ evocative, twisted cinema delves into ‘conspiracy’ | Cinema: previews and reviews

The most terrible thing Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film, is that, despite the appearance of extravagant absurdity and the crazy plot, its two main characters are absolutely recognizable and even truthful. This is how it is with contemporary societies.

The synopsis leaves no doubt: two young people conspiranoids They kidnap the powerful president of a large biotechnology company, convinced that she is actually an alien from the Andromeda system determined to destroy the Earth. And things are serious.

Political satire disguised as science fiction, with touches of fantasy and violent black comedy, Bugonia This is the new version of a little-known Korean film from 2003, not released in Spanish cinemas and which the Movistar platform has recovered in recent days with excellent attention. Save planet Earth, by Jang Joon-hwan, is a work of alarming visual crudeness, which however contains a fabulous idea with enormous dramatic possibilities and social and political criticism, which Lanthimos and Will Tracy, screenwriter of remake, They were able to take the opportunity to end up reflecting on very serious questions.

The difficulties of some citizens in discerning what is real from what is not in the wave of news on the Internet and social networks; the repudiation of the system as a possible response to the excesses of some large multinationals, which result in personal tragedies; the folly of beginning to believe in theories that can only be classified as outlandish; the terror of any response coming from established power; individuality as a lifestyle; the rejection of every mode of information coming from traditional media; the immaculate facades of certain green companies that sometimes hide in their commitment to diversity the pure lie of stock market profits (“We are the company that cares”); other large companies’ bullying of their employees; and the sociopathy of certain young and lonely men, which degenerates into dangerous madness. These are some of the themes and subtexts that swarm around its dramatic seed: the devastation of a beekeeper due to the progressive disappearance of bees and the mistake of a pharmaceutical company with an experimental cure for opioid withdrawal.

The film, unlike Lanthimos, is grotesque and audacious. The director of the magnificent Canine, Lobster, The sacrifice of a sacred deer AND poor creatures, among others, having settled on the outskirts of Hollywood with the stars of American cinema (the formidable Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone), he articulates his new challenge with spectacular visual and sonic power. Complex and evocative cinema, enclosed in a narrow screen format that causes claustrophobia. Bugonia perhaps it stagnates in a central narrative core around control, confinement and cruelty (common to Lanthimos). It culminates, however, with two excellent endings: an epilogue and an epilogue that we will be careful not to reveal, but of which one can be said to be deliberately bizarre, and the other to be devastatingly expressive.

Pairing two dangerous modern idiots with a woman crazy about contemporary economic and political power could only lead to one thing: a twisted Yorgos Lanthimos film.