In Don’t expect too much from the end of the worlda fierce satirical comedy with joyfully irreverent humor, from the formidable director Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn, Golden Bear in Berlin in 2021) pits today’s Romania against that crumbling under the Ceauşescu dictatorship. To do this, it follows in parallel the journey of two women roaming the streets of Bucharest.
Production assistant at the edge of the burnout, Angela Raducani (Ilinca Manolache, who dominates the cast with panache) visits victims of work accidents to give them the chance to participate in a workplace safety commercial sponsored by a multinational, one of which representatives, Doris Goethe (Nina Hoss), favors aesthetics over truth. Among the potential candidates, Angela meets Ovidiu (Ovidiu Pîrsan), whose mother inspired a Lucian Bratu film, Angela merges but leaves (nineteen eighty one).
To the starkly contrasting black and white images in which the production assistant operates, Radu Jude contrasts those with the soft, old-fashioned colors of the film starring Dorina Lazar in the role of Angela Coman. A taxi driver, Angela dreams of meeting the right person while she has to endure sexist and derogatory comments from passengers. Beneath its idyllic appearance, Bratu’s film reveals the miseries of his time which Jude takes pleasure in subtly underlining.
Echoing these men refusing the evolution of morals, the other Angela utters on TikTok, in the guise of her bald avatar with one eyebrow, filthy remarks that Andrew Tate and his masculinist emulators would not deny in order to denounce the unhealthy political climate . During her wanderings, she even came across Uwe Boll, whom many critics and film buffs consider to be one of the worst filmmakers.
Full of nods to Alice in Wonderlandborrowing the messy aesthetic of Warhol’s films and the formal audacity of Godard in his younger days, Don’t expect too much from the end of the world culminates in a finale that is as hilarious as it is despairing. As he revisits the song’s music video Subterranean Homesick Blues, by Bob Dylan, Radu Jude takes aim at the hypocrisy of big business. Concentrated on unfortunate stories told in turn with tenderness and sometimes schoolboy humor by an overexcited Scheherazade, the Romanian UFO demonstrates in a powerful way that from one era to another, low-income earners are shamelessly exploited by the power in place, whether economic or political.
Don’t expect too much from the end of the world is presented in the original Romanian version with French subtitles.
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Satirical comedy
Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii (V. F.: Don’t expect too much from the end of the world)
Radu Jude
Ilinca Manolache, Ovidiu Pirsan, Nina Hoss
2:43 a.m.