BAD LUCK BANGING LOONY PORN

Romania, 2021, 106 minutes, Colour.

Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia.

Directed by Radu Jude.

You certainly have to look twice at this title. And what could it mean? And, of course, the final word in the title gets initial attention – which it does in the film.

This is a Romanian satire, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, 2021. It provoked controversial comment at the time of its winning the award. And has continued to court controversy. For a general release in the United States, 20 minutes of footage were cut from the film – which means that this review, of the full film, is not for American audiences.

The film opens, few holds barred, with an explicit sex scene. It involves a teacher and her husband. They are filming their sexual experiences, for an adult website, but the material finds itself on the Internet.

We are left with that initial experience and spend a considerable amount of time in the next minutes and more with the teacher, going to a meeting, walking around Bucharest, quite a tour of the inner city, the streets, the shops, special attention with the roving camera to the facades of the old buildings, our puzzling about the teacher herself and the relevance of these long sequences to what we saw at the opening of the film.

And then we move to Part Two, a different kind of film altogether. We see a heading about Dictionaries and popular sayings and images and are treated to a very fast collection, selection, of sayings, idioms, images, some of them very witty in wordplay, some of them puzzling – but then we are on to the next without time and space to assess what we have just seen. And, this is where American cuts come in again, no holds barred glimpses of genitalia among the wordplay, satire.

In itself, this would have made quite an effective short film and a critique of Romanian culture, with acknowledgement of the harsh past, the Communist regime, the Ceasceau regime, the 1989 revolution.

But, then there is a third part. The principal of the school where the teacher is employed has called a meeting of parents to discuss the consequences of the filming and its appearing on the Internet, especially with the effect on their children and their appreciation/fears of sexual behaviour. There is a realism in the meeting and the range of views expressed. But, there is a lot of parody in some of these characters, especially the self-righteous types. So the argument goes back and forth, and the film audience responding depending on how they regard censorship and freedom of expression. (And there is a priest in the audience as well who gives his views – and is mocked in the final image during the final credits.)

The director keeps his tongue in cheek right until the final sequences, offering three possible solutions as to how the teacher was treated, how the principal of the school handled the situation, the various reactions of the parents.

Not for the mainstream…