Bug is a four letter word

I've always had a problem with couples who believe the same things, be it Christianity, astrology, yoga or conspiracy theory. I've been blessed through my life with garrulous, combative mates with whom deciding on what to have for dinner is, in its scorched earth aftermath, second only to the War of the Gargantuas. While I have an admiration for guys able to keep their women in a Svengali-like hold, I'm just used to the other way... and as such I watched the goings on in William Friedkin's BUG (2006) with a distinctly jaundiced eye. Oklahoma-born, Chicago-based playwright Tracy Letts adapted his own stage play, which ran in New York for almost a year. However "opened up" the piece may be, it's still an obvious filmed play, confined for the most part to a single set: an Oklahoma motel room where bitter roadhouse waitress Agnes White (Ashley Judd) and quiet loner Peter Evans (Michael Shannon) develop the queen bee of codependencies while fighting off an infestation of microscopic aphids that may or may not be the creation of government scientists. When the screen fades to black just past the 50 minute mark (after Agnes and Peter clear their first relationship hurtle), you can almost hear the girls in black tee shirts redressing the stage.

To say that BUG is unable to shake its theatrical profile isn't a mark against it. Letts specializes in literate plays about semi-illiterate characters feeling their way through the dark and making significant errors in judgment; to have made this piece more cinematic would be to make it a different piece. As a cautionary tale, BUG is hell on its characters and a workout for its actors. Ashley Judd hasn't had this much meat to chew on since John McNaughton's A SIMPLE LIFE (1996) a decade ago while Shannon is quickly establishing himself as one to keep watching. Friedkin and company have trimmed the 2-hour and 20-minute play down to an economical 100 minutes. Not every choice feels right; Lynn Collins' Best Lesbian Friend never really earns her keep and Harry Connick's Abusive Ex-Husband seems designed specifically to provide lateral movement across the frame while Judd and Shannon sit immobile and bug-eyed. A sex scene shot in syrupy elipses is self-consciously arty, as if Friedkin were trying to remake THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964) but overall the result is lean, mean, occasionally gross (one bit of vicegrip dentistry will bring feet off the floor) and often slyly witty.

"What kind of bug?"
"Like an aphid."
"An aphid?"
"An aphid, it's like a... uh..."
"A bedbug?"
"No. Well, yeah, kind of. More like a louse."
"Louse? Oh... lice."
"Not like head lice, more like plant lice."
"Oh. Like a termite."
"No, that's more like a thrip."
"Thrip?"
"Like a termite."
"You mean tick?"
"No, a tick's more like a flea. A thrip's like a termite."
"What's a bedbug like?"
"A bedbug."
"No, I mean what is a bedbug."
"A bedbug."
"I thought that was a nickname."

Because I despise Couples Who Believe, who share an idee fix, who speak the same language, I wanted things to end badly and BUG certainly didn't disappoint me. But afterwards I felt cheated, because it all seemed too pat and deterministic. The film ends like too many of Tracy Letts' plays, in a welter of nudity and violence, which proves the writer is a romantic at heart. Romantics love consummation and hate epilogues. Maybe next time Letts will write something about people who live to regret the stupid things they've done. Survival can be pretty goddamned scary.