A teacher’s career is in jeopardy after a private sexual video she shot with her husband was leaked online. This woman, however, refuses to give in under pressure from parents who demand her dismissal.
This dramatic comedy, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival this year (and Romanian Oscar nominee in the category of best international film), begins with a first transgression. Radu Jude, prolific filmmaker whose most internationally recognized feature film is Aferim!, presents from the outset a sexually very explicit scene, of a genre usually relegated to porn cinema.
It appears that the star of this performance filmed no matter what is Emi (Katia Pascariu), a teacher without history and appreciated by all who, to her astonishment, saw this house film, shot by her husband (more anonymous co-star of the sequence), find yourself on the internet. This is where it gets interesting. Radu Jude, who brings to the screen a screenplay that he himself wrote, obviously wanted to provoke the viewer from the start and then lead him into a reflection on the notion of indecency and obscenity, in geometry variable depending on the nature of the “scandal”.
On the tone of satire, sometimes borrowing a very scathing humor, the story contrasts the indignation – even hypocrisy – of certain parents, who see in this teacher the worst example of depravity and immorality (but who does not ‘do not hesitate to replay the sequence collectively and to comment on it), and the general indifference in the face of the incivility of our time. It should be noted that this feature film also takes into account the pandemic context, which adds to the somewhat surreal aspect of the whole.
Rather than crushing in front of the humiliation that one tries to make him undergo, Emi rather sends back to his detractors works of great poets of the country while the filmmaker, in favor of a hallucinating montage where everything is intertwined , recalls moments in the history of Romania tinged with sexism, racism, fascist collaboration (without forgetting the era of the Ceaușescu regime), and many other things. He also wants to translate the aggressive urban setting of Bucharest, in which Emi must evolve daily.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Bad fuck or barjo porn is the Quebec title – bravo to the person who found it!) will certainly not be unanimous, but it has the merit of highlighting the contradictions of modern society.
In theaters in the original Romanian version with French or English subtitles.
Drama
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Radu Jude
With Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Malai
1 h 46
Consult the film schedule