Bad Luck Banging

"Bad Luck Banging or Loony P(o) rn" - latter word of whose title which I'm writing weirdly to make sure Google's safe search doesn't suppress this, was made more fearlessly than my writing. It is a strange and fascinating Romanian movie - interesting enough that this is the second time I've watched it. It casts a gimlet eye, quite an unflinching and spiky one, on Romanian society. It's nominally about a teacher whose private sex tape ends up made public, and turns her into a whole scandal among the parents and administration. But it's really a lens through which director Radu Jude excoriates society (very specifically Romanian society, but certainly the rest of us are swept along too). There's a middle section, "a short dictionary of anecdotes, signs and wonders," that just brutally and pithily sums up the hypocrisy Jude perceives. Some of it is heartbreaking, some wryly funny, but all in quick enough clips to not feel oppressively heavy-handed. Also there's literal, explicit nudity and sex. Be aware if you come across the uncensored version (I have only seen the censored one, that overlays jokey images over the top).

It's not an easy movie to completely love. But also it completely draws you in. Couple of my favorite things are how real it is when the camera follows the main character through the streets, and also that it is a little COVID time capsule, made during the height of the pandemic, including social distancing jokes and populated by people wearing masks and scarily familiar conspiracy theorists, which really works well with the whole theme. 

Radu Jude has to be a Godard fan.