Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

One of the dumbest movies I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot.

The film is full of philosophical discussions that sound like they were written by teenagers on their first weed joint. Totally stupid. Did you know that it is better to make porn than genocide? That's is kinda sum of all the point of this completely boring and pretentious movie attempt.

When I see that someone talks about this in a "thought provoking" sense, I simply have to think that this person is quite narrow-minded and of a lower intellectual level.

Avoid at all cost. Avoid for your own safe and mental health. Something like sticking needles under your nails is much more pleasant, fun and stimulating than this!

I warned you!

Because of a leaked sex tape, a teacher finds herself scrutinized and reviled by the system.

Rade Jude is an iconoclast but not a gratuitous director and writer. Halfway through he film he references Pasolini, and that makes perfect sense, the Bunuel from "le charme discret de la bourgeoisie", would have been at home too. This movie is an indictment of our moral hypocrisy, be it pertaining to sexual behavior, but also to social and political constructs, and in a very contemporary manner to all the lies and pretense surrounding our individual ways of handling the Covid pandemic.

This movie is graphic, VERY graphic! If you're easily shocked, see something else. But if you don't mind being provoked, being made uneasy, or even challenged in what you consider proper, as long as it is for a reason, go for it.

I don't want to go in spoiler mode, the movie deserves to be discovered as you see it. However it has three parts, each with its own cinematographic language and esthetics. Each part invites us to consider a different angle of the same issue: our relationship to images, their meaning, and the value, or infamy, we attach to them.

From the opening right in your face use of them, through a contemplative approach of the disconnect between what we see and what we're told we see or what we're told to watch, through an exploration of the lies or over-meaningfulness we create when we associate images and comments on these images, to the absolute hypocrisy of the morally woke and conservative puritans alike when it comes to confronting ourselves to the beyond the surface value of images.

And despite the content it is not at all a boring intellectual movie, it is fun, it is in your face, it is masterfully shot, and it solicits your eyes as much as your brain.

Jude is the most experimental, controversial and radical romanian filmmaker: his films never cease to offer a poignant satire of society, irredentism, or his country.

His latest film is a prime example of his peculiarities. The subject is a leaked sextape of a teacher, and the scandal it rises among parents.

The opening of the film features the actual footage of an explicit, unsimulated sextape, not for the purposes of realism (as it could have been with any other Romanian New Wave director), but to force the viewer in the act of voyeurism that will be very blatantly shown in the third act: this chapter of the film features a sort of "trial", in which the teacher is forced to face the parents of her students. When one of the parents shows the video to the others with the purpose of "showing things for what they are", the other parents mock the teacher, laugh, or watch with perverse passion. Through this external sight, the viewer is thus confronted with the reaction they probably displayed at the beginning, a very clever way to involve the audience.

The previous two chapters of this three-chapter story each have their own purpose. The second chapter is a sort of glossary/collection of anecdotes, which introduces briefly all the notions that are later mentioned in the discussion of the third act: not only sex or equality related concepts, but domestic violence, history and romanian historical episodes (as that is the teacher's subject), philosophical concepts, even a metacinematic consideration, all with the goal of preparing the viewer for the final act. It is not only a way to put all viewers on the same page, but also to make explicit the thematic range of the film.

The first chapter features Emi (the teacher) walking around Bucharest doing chores. Through her journey, Jude shows the city as it is under the pandemic (the film was entirely shot last year) and its effects of distress on people, more and more nervous, without disdaining some subtle visual digressions.

While Jude makes very clear which side he supports in the debate of the third chapter, he chooses to give three different endings to the story, which I won't disclose, maybe to thus imply that the viewer has to judge for theirself.

This film is a artistic criticism of Romanian society. Chapter 1 is all porn and boredom. Mainly it's main character walking under the ads of film sponsors. Chapter 2 and 3 are pure art. Chapter 2 is a pure satire on all world societies. Chapter 3 is a ode to hypocrisy of all human kind. It's worth watching, but don't expect much. Just try to bare the 1. Chapter. Rest of the film is good.

There are three categories of people rating this movie. Those who understand satire and symbolism , those who don't and those who are so enraged that their country is being trashed by an unrealistic depiction of the current society.

Guys, it's a movie which is supposed to be fictional and not realistic. Even movies based on real life events fall in the fictional category because no matter the context, a movie will never depict reality as it truly happened but through the lens of the story teller. So people have to chill and look at this movie from an artistic point of view and the message is sending out there (for those who get it of course).

And for those enraged about this director hating his country, maybe you should look at some of Hollywood's greatest directors who made many movies depicting the decadent part of the American society. Does that mean they all hate their country ?

Romania is truly a great country and regardless of the comment by an ignorant reviewer who said and I quote "there are other countries more developed than. Romania which are not part of EU" , I think those guys should actually go and visit Romania where they will quickly realized that the Country has earned its place in the EU.

To be honest I have never heard of this Romanian director until I saw this movie and IMO he has artistic talent. The fact that he was able to produce a movie like this shows that Romania is truly a democratic society where artists can express themselves without being censored.

This movie is not for everyone but it's definitely not a 1,2 or even a 3 star movie. I think it is at least a 7.