Bugonia, to see it at the cinema for free there is a way: shave your head (it’s all true)

In Los Angeles, to see Bugonia for free, one thing is enough: losing your hair. The Culver Theater promised a free ticket to anyone who was already bald or willing to have their head shaved in the lobby, in front of everyone. It’s a perfect marketing idea, thought up by the team at Focus Features and the cinema, but which seems straight out of a movie Yorgos Lanthimos: crazy, ironic and consistent with his cinema.

The initiative is a tribute to Emma Stoneprotagonist of the film – now in Italian cinemas – in the role of a pharmaceutical CEO kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists convinced she is an alien. To cut off communications with her planet, they cut her hair. It is the usual elegant cruelty of Lanthimos, the one that mixes violence and madness. In the film they shave her as a gesture of purification; in reality, fans do it to feel part of Lanthimos’ world. “Are you bald or willing to become bald?”, the advert read. And evidently many were: from six in the afternoon, rows of heads ready for shaving, while the barber went from one skull to another.

It’s the fourth time Lanthimos and Stone they work together afterwards The favorite, Poor Things e Kinds of Kindnessand now they are a de facto couple of auteur cinema. He invents disturbing worlds, she dives into them without batting an eye (and this time, without hair), he bullies her, she wins prizes and lavish praise. At the Venice Film Festival, Bugonia was hailed as the madcap new work by Hollywood’s beloved Greek director. Emma, ​​interviewed by Voguesaid that the shaved head changed her life: “There is no better feeling than the first shower afterwards.” Then he added: «My mother lost her hair due to chemo. She did something brave. I just shaved.”

Whether it’s performance art, marketing or a social experiment, it doesn’t matter. Lanthimos did it again: he created a small cult.