The king of tragicomedy

Emma Stone in ‘Bugonia’.

- RAJA SEN

Emma Stone in 'Bugonia'.

In Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film Bugonia, a grimy conspiracy theorist beekeeper named Teddy—played with sweaty, unhinged conviction by Jesse Plemons—kidnaps a pharmaceutical CEO named Michelle Fuller, convinced she’s an alien intent on destroying humanity.

Like Rupert Pupkin’s delusional celebrity abduction in The King of Comedy—one of Martin Scorsese’s finest—the premise hinges on someone spectacularly dimwitted kidnapping someone famous, and the sheer audacity of the act leaves you with no earthly idea where the story is headed. That, however, can be said of all Lanthimos films: you never quite know where you're going, only that the destination will be stranger and darker than you imagined. (Go to the theatres now.)

Lanthimos leads the Greek Weird Wave, that strange, surreal film movement that emerged from Greece’s financial crisis in the late 2000s. Born from economic collapse and social unrest, these films rejected traditional Mediterranean exuberance for deadpan absurdism and gritty explorations of sex, gender, politics, and family. Other essential makers include Athina Rachel Tsangari, Panos H. Koutras, Yannis Economides, and Argyris Papadimitropoulos. Tsangari’s Chevalier isa savage satire of toxic masculinity set on a boat where six men compete in measuring contests for unclear stakes; Pity, by Babis Makridis, isa fascinating take on how compulsively the grieving can get addicted to receiving sympathy. These films never claimed to have answers to Greece's troubles; they simply provided an unorthodox, unsettling perspective.

Lanthimos announced himself with