Since the beginning of the 2000s, the new Romanian wave has been delighting cinephiles and accumulating prizes at festivals. After Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu here is Radu Jude, awarded for his radicalism with a Golden Bear in Berlin this year.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn , which can be translated as “unlucky fuck or wacky porn” is a vitriolic satire of the time, a farce and an exercise in cinematic style. The film is divided into four parts: The sex-tape shot by Emi, a history teacher in an upscale college in Bucharest, who unfortunately ends up on social networks.
“Flaubert, who wrote on human stupidity, is the tutelary spirit of the film.”
The exhausting stroll à la Jacques Tati d’Emi, in the city saturated with vulgar images and behavior devoid of civility, a notebook of images à la Godard, archive images, taken on the net, which illustrate that the pornography is not necessarily where you think it is, and finally, the confrontation between Emi and the parents of the students. This morality trial turns into carnage, a mysogine, racist, reactionary vent. A commedia dell’arte Romanian, accentuated by wearing a mask, because the film was shot despite the Covid. Radu Jude brilliantly assumes an impure cinema.
In A hero Asghar Farhadi, it is also about social networks. The multi-Caesarized Iranian filmmaker is interested here in the social weight of reputation in his country. A man imprisoned for an unpaid debt, takes advantage of a permission to do a good deed which will allow him to regain his freedom.
“I have an optimistic view of the role of social media in Iran.”
Asghar Farhadito franceinfo
But Asghar Farhadi, an expert in track jamming, is once again playing with the morality of his characters. An art of dodging sharpened by years of bypassing Iranian censorship, always unpredictable, which allows him to examine with precision the changes underway in Iran.
Jérôme Bonnell had no plans to shoot Dear Lea, but when the project he had failed to find funding, he embarked on a low-cost shoot around the corner and it did well.
A quadra on the verge of sentimental and professional burn-out, Grégory Montel, spends one morning with his ex-mistress, Anaïs Demoustier, in vain, but he persists and settles, under his windows, at the local café, to write him a long love letter. The film follows the tragicomic setbacks of the character over a day, under the benevolent gaze of the owner of the bar, Grégory Gadebois.
Finally, we advise you once again, to escape with Vincent Munier, Marie Amiguet and the writer Sylvain Tesson, on the Tibetan summits, in search of The Snow Leopard.
This documentary, of rare beauty, is an invitation to meditation, a lesson in the art of nature observation, and the original music by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave is a Christmas present.