Francis Ford Coppola‘s passion project Megalopolis has received countless jeers from critics and haters, but the one part of the film everyone agrees is spectacular is Aubrey Plaza‘s performance. Plaza plays Wow Platinum, an ambitious financial reporter who covets Adam Driver‘s Cesar Catilina, money, and power, in that order. From the moment she slinks on screen, all catchphrases and desire, Wow Platinum dominates the film’s focus. She schemes and seduces, plots and attacks, and ultimately dies in a way that is fittingly puerile.
Aubrey Plaza is Wow Platinum, yes, but Wow Platinum is the sexual dynamite that keeps Megalopolis exciting in ways films hardly ever are.
By now, you probably already know the backstory of Megalopolis. After wowing critics and cinephiles with films like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola had the itch to follow his muse to a strange, epic project called Megalopolis. For decades he toiled away at the project and struggled to find a studio willing to fund the experimental feature. Ultimately, he financed Megalopolis himself, with money he’d accrued through his lucrative side-hustle, wine-selling.
Megalopolis introduces itself to the audience as a “fable,” set in a version of New York City called New Rome. Characters speak to each other in Latin, fundraise for the city off of the purity of a virginal pop star named Vesta, and note when statues representing the concept of justice crumble to the ground. Cesar Catilina is a genius architect determined to rebuild New Rome as “Megalopolis,” a utopia created from a mysterious, ever-changing substance he’s discovered called “Megalon.” Cesar’s idealistic ambitions butt against the pragmatism of Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and the darker impulses of his wealthy cousin, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBoeuf). Oh, and Cesar can stop time at will, just for fun.
When we first meet Cesar, he’s at an emotional nadir. While grieving the death of his wife and muse, Sunny Hope (Haley Sims), he’s taken Wow Platinum as his mistress. Wow works as TV’s “Money Bunny” and dreams of being part of a true power couple with Cesar. However, Cesar is not interested in Wow apart from sex and soon rejects her in favor of new love interest, Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel). Wow retaliates by seducing and marrying Cesar’s elderly uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight). It’s not just that this move binds them together as family, but through Crassus, Wow becomes the richest woman in the city and the essential puppet master of its bank.
It must be stressed that through the entire film, Plaza plays Wow Platinum like an erotic agent of chaos. Her dialogue is ludicrously horny at times. After noting that Cesar is so “anal,” she drops to her knees and describes herself as “so oral.” During her wedding banquet, she writhes on a sofa, feeding herself cherries, high on her own newfound position of power. When she ultimately designs a takeover of Crassus’s business with ally Clodio, she seals their partnership with an aggressive sex scene. “Auntie Wow” uses Clodio like a plaything, instructing him on how to best pleasure her.
If Cesar and Julia’s romance is a mediation on the power that love lends creativity, Wow Platinum’s form of heartless sexuality represents the destructive elements of pure avarice. Later in the film, Wow’s dialogue begins to become undercut with the sound of scissors slicing. She even mimes the action with her fingers. She is the antithesis of Cesar, who represents creation. Wow Platinum is destruction.
Wow Platinum’s story eventually ends with a boner joke. Just when she and Clodio are on the precipice of stealing everything from Crassus, her old husband calls both into his room. “What do you think of this boner I’ve got?” he says, pointing at a protrusion standing tall under his bed covers. He then reveals it’s actually a small bow and arrow. With three deft shots, he murders Wow and hits Clodio in the rear.
Aubrey Plaza’s performance in Megalopolis should honestly be nominated for an Academy Award. It should be studied in schools and meditated upon by philosophers. She doesn’t just calibrate her voice and movements to transform into a living, breathing metaphor for sexual destruction; she appears to be having a blast doing it, too.
Wow Platinum isn’t the beating heart of Megalopolis, but she is its throbbing boner. It’s an incandescently adventurous and sexual performance that should be celebrated even by those who rejected the film.
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