For a long time now, I’ve enjoyed watching Korea and Mexico battle for the best filmmaking title, with both countries consistently delivering amazing best picture winners from amazing directors. But maybe those countries succeed in the good times. The minute Covid-19 changed how the world works, up rises Romania, ready to show its filmmaking prowess. They made the best movie at the Oscars last year, and this year we get this crazily named story, a lock for my personal Top 10 of the year, and probably the best film that will be made taking place during the pandemic. Looks like we’ve got a Triple Threat Match on our hands folks!
But Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn isn’t about the pandemic, it’s about another modern situation the world has to deal with now: a sex tape. Emi (Katia Pascariu) a mostly well liked teacher at a decent Romanian high school, finds out the sex tape she made with her husband got out, and is on sites like Pornhub now. That means the students, and more importantly, the parents, find out about Emi’s sex life, and want her out of the school. The principal (Claudia Ieremia) calls a parents meeting where Emi’s fate will be discussed that night, so Emi goes about her daily life, pondering upon the potentially life alerting news awaiting her that evening.
This movie has 3 parts, each with their own merits. The weakest part is the post-sex tape first part (yes, the opening of this movie is a 6 minute ish Pornhub type clip, not that I know what that looks like, mom). This part of the movie is the overdone arthouse version of this tale. What Radu Jude the director is going for is something like Cleo From 5 to 7 or Fruitvale Station: using mundane observations about Emi’s real time day-to-day activities and location to make a societal critique about all the other issues going on in the world around her that are WAY more important than a leaked private sex tape. In general this approach when subtle is very potent. The ever present pandemic really drives home this critique magnificently, as Emi buys flowers for dead relatives/friends while she’s distracted dealing with the fallout of having sex with the man she loves. Jude however hammers the point home by lingering on shots of the areas in Bucharest around Emi, showing decaying infrastructure or wickedly ironic sexually lurid advertising. If this stuff is in the background it lets Emi have her story and drives Jude’s point home perfectly fine, but staring at the 21st ironic problem society isn’t caring about for 20 to 30 seconds each time, simply isn’t that entertaining.
Act 2 is the bold part of the movie: as we abandon Emi’s story entirely for…a Romanian dictionary lesson? Even Wes Anderson doesn’t abandon his story for 30 ish minutes on a tangent like Bad Luck Banging does. However, each 30 second ish re definition has a formula to it: 1 is wickedly funny, 1 is horribly depressing. The first third of the movie also has this sort of beat order to it as well, making the tonal whiplash actually make sense. So by minute 2, you realize what Jude is doing and go along for the amazing, inspired definitions and visuals associated with them. The ones that made me laugh the hardest were “social distancing”, “blow job”, and “school.” The ones that almost made me cry were “parenting”, “marriage”, and obviously, “rape” and “racism.”
But Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was building to this big showdown between Emi and the pissed off parents of the kids she teaches. What follows is the best movie sequence I’ve seen so far in 2021, that will leave you on the biggest high note if you’re on this movie’s wavelength. The 1 for 1 funny/depressing ratio continues in this conference/meeting of “ideas.” The whole meeting opens for example, getting every parent on the same page by showing all of the Emi’s sex tape so they can have a “rational” conversation about what they saw. As an audience member, I burst out laughing when this occurred looking upon each parent’s unique reactions, until Jude swings the camera to Katia Pascariu’s face, and you realize that as funny as the situation is, it’s also embarrassing and potentially heartbreaking for poor Emi. The discussion that follows is a masterclass of writing, making every person appalled at Emi’s behavior go into detail as to what bothers them so about what she did. Like all heated angry discussions, most people really don’t have an issue with the inciting event specifically: they’re projecting some other societal ill onto Emi, and using the sex tape as a way to take their frustrations out on her and have the moral high ground to win an easy argument against Emi, making each parent feel better and more smug. Even the defenders of Emi are projecting something other than the sex tape onto Emi: wanting to hook up with the hottie teacher, sex positivie lifestyles, etc. So by the time we reach the end of the discussion, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn has delved into all sorts of debates including public vs. private life, sociological nature of schooling/learning, Romanian historical figures, Holocaust Denial, blow jobs and dirty talk, and even Fox News! And poor Emi has to keep her cool, passionately but not angrily defending what she did while some of the parents try to rip her to shreds. The cherry on top is the ending, also true to the formula, but for the hell of it, throws in an insane third ending, that made me laugh harder than anything I’ve seen in a long time.
1 part comedy, 1 part tragedy. Radu Jude clearly believes this basic tenet of life, and in Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, he really makes us all think about that formula using a sex tape with a side of pandemic. And he has some new alternate definitions to propose to Webster’s for their 2022 dictionary. Start with “social distancing”, “blow job” and “school” please!