Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

I watched this movie knowing only the title, and I believe the element of surprise elevated the experience. Without spoiling the story, I can say that this movie is perfectly described as a roller coaster ride.

In the beginning of the ride, you have a steady climb ahead of you, which takes its time to get to a high altitude. You keep going upvery slowly, and all you can see is the track going up. The main character is introduced, and we follow her for a good while.

Then, the roller coaster slows down and halts at the top. There's a change of chapter and you're not sure about what's coming next. A dictionary of different words is displayed through text and visuals, words that aren't necessarily interconnected. Then, when you least expected it, the roller coaster gains a lot of speed and goes all over the place super fast. You don't even have time to process everything that you're seeing and you can't see where this is going to take you. You even get a bit confused and scared about how long this part is going to last, yet you can't escape the ride yet.

Then, when you're shaken up for the rollercoaster, the ride suddenly starts going slower as you get to a more steady track, and you realise that the end of the ride may arrive soon. The story returns to the teacher and we find out her fate. Here, the conservative nature of the Romanian culture is displayed, with moments of humour, frustration and seriousness, with many stereotypes of people showing their true colours and values.

But then... the roller coaster reveals a loop out of nowhere, that leaves you upside down and then the ride ends really abruptly. You don't know what just happened, you don't know how to react and as you're unbuckling your seatbelt and leaving the premises, you're still confused as hell.

This review may be relatable to the people who have seen this movie, yet may leave people who haven't seen it yet really confused. And I'm still confused about this movie myself, and this is the best way I can describe this.

I recommend people to watch this movie. As confused about how to feel about this movie, I think this is an excellent thought-provoking experience which could start a debate about real-life cultural problems.

There are two distinct categories of people who reviewed this film: those who awarded it high marks and those who didn't- at all. The director, Radu Jude- impressed me with his "Aferim!" - a film which gives food for thought by dealing with a very little known and uncomfortable subject in Romanian history: the slavery of gypsies from past centuries.

"Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" is just as uncomfortable, but it is set in contemporary Romania. As contemporary as it gets: the pandemic year of 2020. The title itself is misleading; this film is not about sex, though it is the starting point of the plot. For that, one can search Pornhub. This is a film about how sick and ailing the Romanian society is in its entirety; the first chapter of the film takes us on a ride along with the protagonist through the Bucharest of our days: noisy, dirty, unkempt, unruly, impolite, careless, unappealing, selfish, vulgar. If some don't like it, well, why break the mirror if it shows you what you look like? A lot of the filming in this section reminded me of La Nouvelle Vague.

The second chapter has apparently no connection whatsoever with the first. Or has it? An ad libitum dictionary of contemporary notions translated into the Romanian realities of the moment; what can be more hilarious and heart wrenching at the same time?! Considering the way it is put together, Monty Python comes to mind.

As for the third chapter, well, this is Romanian society at its best. First of all, it is not for the parents to decide whether a teacher can be fired or not; it is a state school, hence free for the pupils, so the parents shouldn't have a say in who stays and who goes. This chapter of the film is so full of harsh satire directed at how the Romanians think they have a say in everything, thus displaying a wide range of all kinds of preconceptions, stereotypes and fake news distribution- racial, political, social, sexual- that one doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Yes, this is us, whether we like it or not.

And the grand finale, well... you have to watch it in order to choose which one suits you best. I go for the third, full throttle.

Great job, Radu Jude and his team! A fully deserved Golden Bear!

Awesome movie, but I don't think a person not familiar with Romanian culture and history will understand it properly. I generally don't like artsy films, but this was an example of one done right. It has kept me interested throughout, with minor exceptions. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you get sad, ashamed, bored, confused. It cycles you through these emotions in a dynamic way.

I also liked the fact that they've advertised some of the sponsors straight on, without trying to hide it in any way.

Because of a leaked sex tape, a teacher finds herself scrutinized and reviled by the system.

Rade Jude is an iconoclast but not a gratuitous director and writer. Halfway through he film he references Pasolini, and that makes perfect sense, the Bunuel from "le charme discret de la bourgeoisie", would have been at home too. This movie is an indictment of our moral hypocrisy, be it pertaining to sexual behavior, but also to social and political constructs, and in a very contemporary manner to all the lies and pretense surrounding our individual ways of handling the Covid pandemic.

This movie is graphic, VERY graphic! If you're easily shocked, see something else. But if you don't mind being provoked, being made uneasy, or even challenged in what you consider proper, as long as it is for a reason, go for it.

I don't want to go in spoiler mode, the movie deserves to be discovered as you see it. However it has three parts, each with its own cinematographic language and esthetics. Each part invites us to consider a different angle of the same issue: our relationship to images, their meaning, and the value, or infamy, we attach to them.

From the opening right in your face use of them, through a contemplative approach of the disconnect between what we see and what we're told we see or what we're told to watch, through an exploration of the lies or over-meaningfulness we create when we associate images and comments on these images, to the absolute hypocrisy of the morally woke and conservative puritans alike when it comes to confronting ourselves to the beyond the surface value of images.

And despite the content it is not at all a boring intellectual movie, it is fun, it is in your face, it is masterfully shot, and it solicits your eyes as much as your brain.

Jude is the most experimental, controversial and radical romanian filmmaker: his films never cease to offer a poignant satire of society, irredentism, or his country.

His latest film is a prime example of his peculiarities. The subject is a leaked sextape of a teacher, and the scandal it rises among parents.

The opening of the film features the actual footage of an explicit, unsimulated sextape, not for the purposes of realism (as it could have been with any other Romanian New Wave director), but to force the viewer in the act of voyeurism that will be very blatantly shown in the third act: this chapter of the film features a sort of "trial", in which the teacher is forced to face the parents of her students. When one of the parents shows the video to the others with the purpose of "showing things for what they are", the other parents mock the teacher, laugh, or watch with perverse passion. Through this external sight, the viewer is thus confronted with the reaction they probably displayed at the beginning, a very clever way to involve the audience.

The previous two chapters of this three-chapter story each have their own purpose. The second chapter is a sort of glossary/collection of anecdotes, which introduces briefly all the notions that are later mentioned in the discussion of the third act: not only sex or equality related concepts, but domestic violence, history and romanian historical episodes (as that is the teacher's subject), philosophical concepts, even a metacinematic consideration, all with the goal of preparing the viewer for the final act. It is not only a way to put all viewers on the same page, but also to make explicit the thematic range of the film.

The first chapter features Emi (the teacher) walking around Bucharest doing chores. Through her journey, Jude shows the city as it is under the pandemic (the film was entirely shot last year) and its effects of distress on people, more and more nervous, without disdaining some subtle visual digressions.

While Jude makes very clear which side he supports in the debate of the third chapter, he chooses to give three different endings to the story, which I won't disclose, maybe to thus imply that the viewer has to judge for theirself.