COVID-ERA ROMANIAN CINEMA OF THE ABSURD: Sex, Lives and Video.mov by Matt Olsen
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), directed by Radu Jude
As one of the standard-bearers of the Romanian New Wave, writer-director Radu Jude, has been key in the creation of several of the most interesting films of the last fifteen years or so. It’s entirely unsurprising that one his first jobs was as an assistant director for The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, certainly among the most well-received films of that movement and, arguably, of the best of this still young century. Though he achieved notice for his first short film, the neorealism influenced, The Tube with the Hat, it wasn’t until Aferim! from 2016, that his work made a significant impact in America. Aferim! has an excitingly uneasy tone that balances humor and pain in a way slightly reminiscent of fellow Easter European filmmaker Emir Kusturica’s movies from the 1990s. Even though Aferim! received international acclaim and was the official Romanian submission for the Academy Awards, outside of film festival screenings, most of Jude’s movies haven’t been easy to find here in the USA, even via streaming or DVD. Such that, it was a total surprise to discover this new film, Bad Luck Banging…, showing at a theater within walking distance of my home.
An admission at the top: this film, like Jude’s previous, I Do Not Care if we Go Down in History as Barbarians contains many references to (and excoriations of) Romanian history and contemporary culture about which I am almost wholly ignorant. Thus, I’m well aware I’ve missed much of the depths plumbed in the story. Caveat emptor and whatnot.
The first several minutes are intentionally shocking. Without any warning or artifice, the film begins with a man and a woman in the midst of extremely graphic and varied sexual acts as shot by one or the other from a handheld camera, probably a phone. It’s a sex tape. It bears mentioning only because the sequence is so sudden and off-putting that I was questioning the filmmaker’s intent during and after the scene. As the story resolved, I concluded that there was an empathetic effect achieved that I don’t think would have been with a more sanitized version.
Delineated by a bright pink title card, Part One (of three) follows a young teacher, Emi, one of the subjects of the sex tape, throughout present-day Bucharest. From her side of a phone conversation, it’s revealed that the privately made sex tape has been leaked online. The school board and several of the students’ parents have called for an emergency meeting to discuss the subject and her future at the school. That’s the central premise but as Emi walks through the city encountering scenes of unrelated, commonplace anger, the camera drifts to rest on seemingly random bits of architecture. The public tension is palpable and those lingering shots above the sidewalks offer a strange shift of perspective.
Part Two breaks free from any narrative to present an alphabetically organized slideshow of, maybe, thirty or forty things, people, and places related to the story. The series encompasses subjects from Nicolae Ceaușescu to blowjobs, though some of the connections to the main plot seem fairly tangential. But, as an aforementioned largely oblivious American, it’s probable that no small part of this went directly over my head.
Finally, Part Three, subtitled as “Sitcom” is where the film achieves a wild excellence. The meeting with the school board is held in an outdoor courtyard due to COVID protocols. The attendees are all masked and/or complain about being asked to wear masks. (The pandemic here has, much like our real lives in this moment, become a largely normalized condition and isn’t a significant plot point in the film.) A debate ensues to determine if Emi should be allowed to continue on as a teacher, resign, or be fired. The arguments, pro and con, generally contain some valid and thoughtful points, but Jude plays this confrontation primarily for comedy. Weird, discomfiting, and raucous comedy, at that. Happily, he’s successful. The meeting is cast with broad character types and the soundtrack is a symphony of off-screen heckles including someone repeatedly mimicking the Woody Woodpecker laugh. It’s a truly bizarre contrast to Emi’s well-reasoned and highly emotional defense of a situation in which she is blameless.
Lastly, the finale of this film, about which I’ll say nothing, goes off the rails with a wonderfully bonkers disregard for audience expectation. Top marks.
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.