Inside the 'silly games' that fueled 'Bugonia' behind the scenes

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Jesse Plemons, in his thoughtful baritone, admits, “In hindsight, I think she kept me off-balance for the majority of the shoot in a way that I don’t think I could comprehend in the moment.” Then he turns to the other two people sharing the couch: “Why are you guys laughing?”“No, I’m not,” says Emma Stone, failing to stay exactly stone-faced while pointing at a snickering Yorgos Lanthimos: “He thinks that I’m …”“No, she — she —,” Lanthimos protests, trying unconvincingly to blame her.Stone pulls it together and says, facing down her director, “I’m laughing because you’re thinking it’s funny.Because I knew immediately that Yorgos was going to be like — ” she (accurately) imitates his snicker in anticipation of what Stone was going to say in response to Plemons.

Lanthimos looks indignant, but he’s caught.“I laughed because she did,” he weakly claims, and there are more giggles.And Plemons, suddenly the new kid in class again, outside the in-joke despite his second film with these two, declares, “That’s the end of the interview.”These three very professional cinematic artistes are populating the couch in a swanky West Hollywood hotel suite to discuss their latest collaboration, “Bugonia,” Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy’s adaptation of the 2003 Korean feature “Save the Green Planet!” In the film, the intelligent but troubled Teddy (Plemons) and his naive cousin Don (newcomer Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle (Stone), the chief executive of a major pharmaceutical company.They don’t want money; Teddy is convinced Michelle is an Andromedon — an alien from another star system who is an enemy to humanity.The film is essentially a three-hander, Teddy going to harrowing extremes to force Michelle to confess, with poor, loyal Don caught in the middle.

Its constantly shifting tactics and power balances live in the limin...