Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Romania's Golden Bear winner, while living up to its title, offers a critique of modern life.
This film by Romania’s Radu Jude is intended as a provocation, but its title is arguably misleading in that it suggests a sex farce in which any crudity present will be there solely to make the audience laugh. It is indeed true that Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn contains what for a cinema film is even now an unusually explicit sex scene, but the work has aims that go far beyond any wish merely to amuse. It is patently not by chance that at one point it is mentioned that a true poet's view of life recognises both its tragedy and its comedy and, if Jude is not exactly a poet, he is certainly setting out to create a film which incorporates both of those elements. It’s a viewpoint that has found splendid cinematic form in the best work of Sweden’s Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor; About Endlessness) but that is a comparison which, while it illuminates Jude’s intentions, also underlines the extent to which he falls short.
Jude gives us more of a story than is usually found in Andersson’s films but all the same his tale is such that had it been presented as a work of literature it would have been no more than a short story. It concerns an able school teacher, Emi (Katia Pascariu), who finds her job under threat when a private sex tape which shows her and her husband making love goes viral. The parents of her pupils demand a meeting about it and the headmistress (Claudia Ieremia) agrees to that hoping that discussion will calm matters but aware that it could lead to Emi being condemned so strongly that she would have to be asked to resign.
Apart from providing a plot-line the situation allows Jude to evangelise for his belief that, since sex is a normal part of human life, to censor depictions of it is wrong (in a sense he is here following in the footsteps of D.H. Lawrence). He emphasises this view by showing the explicit sex tape in the opening minutes of the film and only then does he go on to the first of the three numbered segments that together make up this movie. The first of these, entitled ‘One-Way Street’, confirms in passing the difficulty in which Emi finds herself but for the most part it just follows her as she goes shopping. What we are given are incidental encounters and details that show up the banality and bad behaviour of life today (we know that it’s today because the actors are often seen wearing masks due to the pandemic). The tone is more sharp and bitter than comic, a fact that underlines how much more adroit Andersson is at making us laugh a lot even when his overall tone is downbeat.
As though he is aware of the slightness of the story-line, Jude’s second section finds him jettisoning Emi for a series of sayings, observations and quotations divorced from any plot but linked to particular words. Each one is brief but we start at A and go through to Z so as a whole it is quite lengthy. It ranges from the idea of history providing us with a sombre vision (like Andersson, Jude’s dismay at our present existence extends back to horror over past events) to a number of sex references tonally reminiscent of the film’s explicit preface. In a book such comments as these could be mulled over by a reader who is free to pause whereas here even the more memorable comments flash by too quickly to sink in fully.
The best part of the film is the third section showing Emi facing the parents at the meeting that has been called. Those parents present who are horrified by the tape and who insist that Emi should be dismissed often fall back on clichéd and frequently irrelevant attitudes so that there is a touch of absurd comedy here. But more often this final segment plays seriously, be it through references to Hannah Arendt and Isaac Babel or through the inclusion of comments that expose the presence of racism, antisemitism and homophobia among those convinced that Emi’s tape is the ultimate sin. Jude’s own views are never in doubt and he conveys them with passion as well as with irony. Overall, though, the film is an oddity rather than a work that lodges in the memory and, when Jude ends with three possible conclusions, it is perhaps no surprise that for the last one of all he resorts once again to a sexual scene intended to outrage all those who question his attitude.
Original title: Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Nicodim Ungureanu, Olimpia Malai, Alexandro Potocean, Florin Petrescu, Stefan Steel, Andi Vasluianu, Gabriel Spahlu, Ana Ciontea, Ion Dickiseanu, Adrian Enache.
Dir Radu Jude, Pro Ada Soloman, Screenplay Radu Jude, Ph Marius Panduru, Pro Des Christian Niculescu, Ed Catalin Cristutiu, Music Jura Ferina and Pavas Miholjevic, Costumes Cireşica Cuciuc.
microFILM/Paul Thitges Distributions/Endorfilm/Kinorama/Bord Cadre Films-Sovereign Film Distribution.
106 mins. Romania/Luxembourg/Czech Republic/Croatia/Switzerland/UK. 2021. Rel: 26 November 2021. Cert. 18.
