Bad Luck Bang­ing or Loony Porn

Filmed at the height of the pan­dem­ic, this new film from prodi­gious Roman­ian satirist Radu Jude fol­lows a school teacher fac­ing scan­dal after a sex tape appears online star­ring her­self and her husband.

The video’s appear­ance rais­es a num­ber of ques­tions: Where lies the line between pub­lic and pri­vate, and what issues arise when the dis­tinc­tion is shown to be unclear? What is to be defined as obscene or immoral and who gets to dic­tate this? Are there sit­u­a­tions in which cen­sor­ship is jus­ti­fi­able, or is it a slip­pery slope to greater suppressions?

With a nar­ra­tive split into three sec­tions, Jude doesn’t attempt to resolve any of these ques­tions, instead it prods and pokes at each, open­ing up fur­ther provo­ca­tions and lines of inquiry. The first part sees the teacher Emi (Katia Pas­car­iu) wan­der around down­town Bucharest, attend­ing to var­i­ous chores and becom­ing increas­ing­ly flus­tered by the vary­ing pan­dem­ic-relat­ed imped­i­ments, argu­ments, and frus­tra­tions she encoun­ters, all of which are usurped by the more imme­di­ate prob­lem of a par­ent teacher asso­ci­a­tion who want to see her impru­dence met with punishment.

Skip­ping to the third part, we see the stag­ing of a kan­ga­roo tri­al where­in the par­ents of Emi’s stu­dents debate the exact nature of the trans­gres­sion, decid­ing whether or not she should keep her job. Bisect­ing these two dra­mat­ic sequences is a bravu­ra essay­is­tic mid­sec­tion that sees Jude cycle through an A to Z of Roman­ian words of his choosing.

In this, quo­ta­tions, triv­ia, one-lin­ers, visu­al gags, and oth­er non sequiturs are accom­pa­nied by a mix of archive mate­ri­als, social media clips and new short sequences filmed using the actors from the oth­er parts recast into new tran­sient roles.

All the sec­tions are dif­fer­ent but each offers some­thing to chew on. The first expos­es ten­sions with­in Roman­ian soci­ety, see­ing cit­i­zens incit­ing and insult­ing one anoth­er, aggra­vat­ed by a pan­dem­ic that has brought pre­vi­ous­ly sub­li­mat­ed social and ide­o­log­i­cal strat­i­fi­ca­tions into plain sight.

The sec­ond charts his­tor­i­cal injus­tices, using iron­ic detach­ment to present a prob­ing record of human wrong­do­ing, hypocrisy, and exploita­tion over time. The last part uses its char­ac­ters as avatars to dis­play the prej­u­dices of peo­ple of all sorts of sys­tems of con­ser­v­a­tive belief, and chal­lenge the idea that indi­vid­ual acts of impro­pri­ety should be con­demned when cor­rup­tion and vio­lence at a state or church lev­el is per­mit­ted to continue.

An over­flow of ener­gy and ideas, what it all amounts to is nev­er exact­ly clear. This is no issue though, as this is an exper­i­men­tal film in the truest sense of the word. Here, faced with many bar­ri­ers, a direc­tor is exper­i­ment­ing with the film form itself, tak­ing apart all the tools at his dis­pos­al and smash­ing togeth­er their raw com­po­nents to forge some­thing new.