Jesse Plemons did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite being nominated for SAG and BAFTA, for portraying Teddy Gatz in Bugonia.
Bugonia follows a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps a powerful CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) because he believes she is an alien.
The last time I reviewed Jesse Plemons it was also for a Yorgos Lanthimos film where he successfully found his away around the peculiar nature of pure, as in written and directed, style of Lanthimos without being lost within the direction through three different vignettes in Kinds of Kindness. Plemons returns to work with him again, once again with Emma Stone, though this time to portray a directed but written by someone else Lanthimos, which always results in a different kind of film. It is still a dark comedy as all of Lanthimos is, however the comedy of this darkness isn’t without the detached alien world of pure Lanthimos, which affords an even greater opportunity for the actor who seems to be a favorite among so many talented filmmakers. Plemons here gets to play the role of Teddy Gatz who we follow in the opening of the film as he is emotionally preparing his co-conspirator, though an unfortunate follower is probably a better description, Don (Aidan Delbis). Plemons is a master of the tone for this film, which while sharing some of the DNA is no way a copy of Kind and Kindness and in many ways trickier because there’s more emotional depth allowed. Plemons in the opening scenes is amazing in his particular delivery where it isn’t exactly monotone, but almost pseudo professional as he goes about telling Don all the “truths” he knows. Although it is darkly comic, Plemons is also though convincing in not playing it with the strictest purity of that spirit. There is the sense of the drive to convince Don and maybe even a bit of the insecurity of bringing Don within this mission even as he speaks with that particular form of conviction. The key moments being when Don asks follow-up questions, and Plemons shows that Teddy stumbles more than with his monologues. I especially love the moment where Don asks if two random people are aliens, and Plemons’s essentially “oh no not them, but they’re lost” is such an artful combination of someone being shaken off their false rhythm then creating the strange momentum of trying to make any kind of recovery within the sentiment. It isn’t that Plemons plays that Teddy is lying, however his convictions are representative of an emotional mess of a mind trying to create some kind of truth as he sees it.
Teddy and Don successfully kidnap Michelle and bring her back to Teddy’s remote and ramshackle house as a prison for the woman he believes to be an alien. Plemons’s amazing in this scene where with Don there was more of hesitation in some aspects of the conversation, despite being mixed with his strange conviction, here it is with an eerie conviction that is quite startling while also being quietly comical. Plemons’s masterful in the exact delivery he is able to find as he explains to Michelle that he had to cut off her hair in order to prevent her from contacting her ship. Plemons’s eyes capture such an unnerving mania in the moment because within those eyes we see the assertiveness that Teddy does fine when presenting it directly to Michelle. An assertiveness that will speak to more things than that, but in the opening of this conversation between the two the cold exactness of every word that Plemons brings is disturbing within the specificity of that conviction. Maybe he does have doubts related to Don but when with Michelle and directed at Michelle Plemons shows a man with a purpose, a completely demented purpose it would seem. There’s one line in particular that Plemons colors a certain way, a color that you don’t know about the first time but is chilling the second. Which is noting that “they all” deny being an alien but admit it eventually. That line has an absolute certainty in Plemons’s performance more than anything else and within that certainty he is at his most disturbing, which we later find out why he is so particularly certain that someone kidnapped by him will admit to being an alien. Plemons tells a fundamental truth about Teddy in this moment though we won’t know what this truth means precisely until much later in the film.
We see Teddy occasionally outside of the situation directly where Plemons is also incredible in how much he does with a little at times, as really just the way he silently rides his bike a few times throughout the film is a bit of a showcase on how to do a whole lot in a performance in a theoretically simple situation. Yet the specific lack of normalcy and more readily this directed purpose of his performance in these scenes reinforces Teddy as a man with a mission, although not a mission most would consider let alone sign up for. I love Plemons even in some incidental moments such as when he’s talking with a coworker, “acting natural”, which for Teddy he never quite can act natural. But Plemons is rather fascinating when he advises a worker to get compensation for their injury and even says that things are going to change in their world soon. Plemons’s exact delusion is just so brilliantly spoken in every word because there’s this quiet unearned pride in his delivery as he eagerly presents himself to the other person essentially as a hero with a plan he can’t quite reveal to her yet. Teddy unfortunately for his plan is also frequently pestered by a local deputy sheriff Boyd (Stavros Halkias) who was also a former babysitter for Teddy. In each of these scenes they share, Plemons manages to thread a needle while playing the more surface note. The sort of quiet intensity in his eyes in these moments, the short delivery of every response as “let’s get this over with it”, speaks to a criminal not wanting to speak to the police, however Plemons puts just a bit more emotion and intensity into both of these where there feels the personal direction. Where one can sense that Teddy’s issues with Boyd go even further than just wanting to keep his kidnapping of Michelle a secret.
Where Plemons very much excels in bringing the seemingly demented state of Teddy alive so effectively where this takes on even greater heights is bringing in what I fundamentally always appreciate in not-written-by Lanthimos, which is raw emotion. An aspect we are introduced in part, which honestly is some of my favorite radical cinematic imagery from 2025, where we see the past through the Teddy filter where his mom is literally floating within a coma due to the drug treatment by Michelle’s company. Once again outstanding silent work from Plemons, in fact if we were just giving an award for a single facial expression Plemons would be a tough one to beat with how much he does with his facial expression in the flashback. As Plemons is able to show a younger man, a more naive man, a more emotionally broken man in a pure sense where you are granted a degree of the real pain and most of all just this state of a being absolutely lost in the world as in his mind he’s literally holding onto his dying mother like a balloon. That fundamental grief is what we see fuels Teddy more than anything and this is what Plemons runs with in this performance, particularly as we get to a scene between Teddy, Michelle and Don as they dine together. Michelle plays her hand noting that she does remember Teddy and his mother. Plemons is just altogether amazing as we see in his eyes and his expression building volcanic anger in Teddy. In every moment she speaks to him about her mother, Plemons, despite playing such a bent character, honestly is even moving because he shows just the raw unmitigated grief that is just bubbling under the surface in Teddy for every second that Michelle mentions his mother’s name. Plemons so powerfully builds to every second before wholly earning the animalistic rage that takes over as Michelle’s words lead him to literally run across a table and physically attack her.
The mess of the kidnapping becomes more rabid when Don begins to have more doubts, particularly when Teddy “tests” her by electrocuting her to get “readings”. A fascinating scene however, and one again where Plemons alludes to more than we know about Teddy though in a different arena, when he apologizes to Michelle because the “readings” note her as of royal alien lineage. Plemons’s words of reverence towards her are real and authentic as anything else he’s done and again the conviction in his eyes speaks to more than just someone saying whatever nonsense comes to their head next, there’s genuine belief there. Complicating things further is Deputy Boyd’s appearance at the house, who essentially reveals to having sexually abused Teddy when he was younger, something that is already apparent within even just Plemons’s physical work around him where he is looking away and down and out like a dog who was beaten too many times. Taken even further though when Boyd is alerted to something when Don kills himself with a shotgun, leading Teddy to stun Boyd with his bees before beating him to death with a shovel. The emotion behind that shovel beat down again made more than just a man getting rid of an obstacle rather you see Boyd as a true fixation of Teddy’s hatred. Plemons at this point somehow taking an already extreme emotional state and going further with it in a most impressive display, as Plemons’s reaction to Don’s death is filled with real emotional devastation where he is able to contain within the mess of Teddy’s mind fear, and anger towards how the situation has gone along with hints of genuine shame in culpability nagging at the back of his mind.
Michelle is able to get Teddy to leave by essentially telling him to poison his own mother with antifreeze by telling him it is in fact a formula that will cure her. A totally insane prospect that Plemons honestly sells through every bit of his physical and verbal life where he shows a man basically mangled by his life and his plan as he rushes to enact Michelle’s fix. Where Plemons is particularly amazing is as totally insane of a situation as Teddy poisons his own mother leading to her death, the raw emotion of Teddy’s grief is absolutely real. Plemons delivers real heartbreak of the tragedy even as he presents a totally deranged person he presents that core of a real man that came to this place. A fascinating element as Plemons manages to ground the character Teddy even as he is so successful in presenting the extremes of him at the same time. An element that is pivotal in his final sequence of the film when Michelle, having discovered that Teddy is in fact a serial killer who killed many other people and “aliens” explaining his previous use of they when talking about his victims admitting their alien, Michelle then readily admits, seemingly, that she is an alien, however she presents this in a confrontational dominating way. Plemons is wholly convincing in his reaction now as someone lost but gripping onto the only reality he can know which is the one Michelle is presenting so ruthlessly to him. Plemons brings this penetrating fear in his reactions to every one of her cutting words even as he’s the one still holding the gun, believably conveying this apologetic tone to the alien in the same vein as his previous reverence. Michelle offers Teddy a trip to the mothership to negotiate, and Plemons is outstanding throughout the sequence. As he carries the underlying tension of the man still holding the hostage and still being very much dangerous in the situation as he and Michelle very conspicuously move towards her office. He also brings in the conflicting elements of his derangements, bringing even genuine warmth when asking if Don can come to the ship as well, despite being dead, but also a brilliantly realized combination of doubts. Plemons is able to create this convincing smear of emotions as there are moments where it seems like Teddy is most doubting the ideas as he’s closest to it, while also being extremely nervous at the notion of actually essentially coming face to face with his foes. Plemons not being vague but rather very particular in creating so convincingly this wholly broken state of a man as he’s at his least assured when theoretically he’s nearest to his final goal. In case the rest of the review didn’t make it clear I adore every moment of this performance which is out on a limb and thrives for every second of it. Plemons is masterful because he does sell the darkest of comedy, the most extreme bits of madness a human can muster, yet does so in a way where there is a deeply human core to all of it that manages to be both heartbreaking and bone chilling.
