Bugonia (2025)

Plot of Bugonia: Michelle Fuller, CEO of a big pharma corporation Auxolith, is kidnapped by Teddy and his friend the intellectually challenged Don. They shackle her to a bed in the basement of Teddy’s house and shave her hair off. Teddy is an employee of Auxolith in the packing department and is a bee keeper. In flashback we see that his mother has taken part in a company drug trial which has left her comatose, surviving on life support. Teddy accuses Michelle of being an alien from Andromeda and suggests that she should take him to their spacecraft which will enter earth space in four days during a total eclipse. She tells him he is deluded and offers to improve his mother’s care and increase the level of compensation he would receive. She also detects the fact that Don, is concerned at Teddy’s anger, and physical attacks on Michelle. When Teddy electrocutes Michelle, but she withstands the pain, he says that she must be an empress from the alien world and changes his attitude, but does not let her go. As the time to the eclipse is reduced the tension increases and Teddy seems to be ready to kill Michelle if she does not agree to take him to space.

Content: No sex or nudity, drinking, smoking or drug taking. Michelle is captured with some difficulty and abducted in her own Mercedes. In teddy’s basement she is shackled to a camp bed, and her head shaved. She and Teddy debate incessantly as she attempts to convince him by a variety of strategies that he is deluded, and then that she will reward him if he lets her go. Teddy is violent at times, and his friend Don nervous. The electrocution of Michelle is distressing. Teddy’s mother lies in a bed connected up to tubes and wires. Don shoots himself. Later there is violence and death as Teddy takes extreme measures to make sure he will get to the Andromedan space craft.

A View: The critics generally approved of this outing although most said that it was not one of the director’s best. He had not actually been the first choice for the job, although when he took over he demands and got total control of the project and it shows. My wife and I went to see it at our usual venue in Madrid without any knowledge about it other than the name of the director and we were not disappointed.  It is a film which mostly is made up of dialogue, both protagonists advancing arguments which may, or may not, be true. It is difficult to know who to believe. So well worth the cost of a cinema ticket.

Fun Fact: At an advance screening in Los Angeles people were allowed in free if they had their heads shaved before entry.