Emma Stone’s Apocalyptic Showdown Blooms in 'Bugonia'

The first picture Emma Stone made with the director Yorgos Lanthimos was “The Favourite” (2018), a splendidly wicked royal romp, with a curiously prophetic title. Stone and Lanthimos have since worked together several times, and their collaboration, a mutual-favoritism society, has been hailed and sometimes reviled for its darkly exuberant sense of risk. In “Bleat” (2022), a deviation from Lanthimos norms—it was short, black-and-white, and dialogue-free—Stone played a lusty widow who miraculously fucked her dead husband back to life. More transgressive acts of sex and resuscitation awaited in “Poor Things” (2023), in which Stone incarnated the brain of a child, the body of a woman, and the skills of a mad surgeon. The world was her playpen, her boudoir, and her operating theatre.