In 2015 Radu Jude released AFERIM! Which I delightfully reviewed here and also produced a Moviedrome on. That film was a masterful take on the western, that was positioned as a historical drama. One that took on Romanian indifference and its rather uncomfortable past. Jude then seems to have released film after film, that was either unwilling or unable to fix a subject, without overtly discussing the darkness of the past. Though not a terrible thing at all, it sometimes felt like a battering. Sometimes the story can translate the points to the audience without the overt sermon. Though also I understand that sometimes, these times, we need to be a little heavier handed.

BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONEY PORN is broken into 4 parts. The first, third and forth finds history teacher Emi Cilibiu(Katia Pascariu), at a well-respected Romanian secondary school, film a sex tape with her husband Eugen (Stefan Steel). Uploaded to a private fetish site, someone downloads the film and then shares it across multiple sites. Engaged parents of her students protest that she shouldn’t be allowed to stay on. A parent-teacher conference is called. Emi takes the day to get acclimatized to the event. As she walks across Bucharest, Romanian society is revealed as a series of empty, materialistic, racist, sexist troupes. Before she ends up in front of the board. The second act is a series of vinaigrettes that create a lesson in the country, sexuality, and vocabulary. In the modern world.

In the post Trump world, everything about the film will offend. Truth often does. Sex is graphic. Penetrating the expectation. Though these voices have used the usual tactic of focus on the irrelevant, such as. Much could be made of the filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, actor’s method, wearing masks throughout, sanitizing hands and working in bubbles. However little will be comfortably discussed about BAD LUCK BANGING nods and notes to the countries past, present, and future. The first act meanders. The second lectures. The third is a theatre of opinion and the forth, defies the expectations. From the legacy of communist, to the treatment of Roma’s and Jews.

The film does not avoid the bitter truths. Romanian history is a mess of violence, prejudice and ideological force. But then we see that these are nothing more than continued experiences. Expressing the country has changed and cultivated layers of oppression. It also does not gloss over the power of sex in the public domain. Such a private act, between two people or more, is treated by some as a dog whistle to debauchery. Yet nothing is truer than the films honest framing of sex, morality and opinion in the modern, social media world. We are victims of opinions. They are always framed in the way, someone wants us to see ourselves. So the religious can be supporters and also our biggest opponents, as an example. Though not for the tender or for the person expecting another Jude lecture, it is an intelligent, if sometimes under whelming film.

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