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Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a movie that defies conventional rating, and I find it almost inappropriate to give it any kind of label. It is a socio-political reflection over three acts, the first of which could be described as a dynamic version of Google Street View, the second as a documentary essay on one hundred and one topics, and the third as a raucous polemic on the controversial central storyline of the entire movie. There are many thought-provoking ideas, and the movie’s bizarre sense of humor works at times, yet the odd structure did not quite sit so well with me personally, and I thought the first third of the movie gave the audience quite a hard time especially. (08.06.2021)

At its core, this a classic morality tale whose carnivalesque ending exposes the true characters of several hypocrites in response to one female teacher’s “internet bunga bunga”. It thus scores hits on targets that are so slow-moving that it is almost impossible to miss them. However, Radu Jude attacks social and narrative conventions with such a sense of absurdity and such vigour not seen in Eastern and Central European cinema since perhaps the films of Dušan Makavejev and other filmmakers of the Yugoslav Black Wave. ___ Jude approaches nudity and sexuality with a similar matter-of-factness as in the Romanian film Touch Me Not, whose poster hangs in the background of the opening sex scene. Though the couple spice things up with masks, dirty talk and leather whips, this is rather ordinary domestic sex, in which there is nothing disturbing, despite the events that follow. Much more offensive things happen on the streets of Bucharest in the opening part of the film, where vulgarisms and the sexualisation of women are a terrifyingly common part of life in the city. ___ The formalistic open-mindedness of the film’s three stylistically different chapters reflects the communicational impotence of the characters, who are incapable of listening to each other due to their age, class or religious differences, as well as the inwardness of their intellectually limited worlds. At the same time, a certain unkemptness, resulting from the rapid filming, amplifies the urgency of Jude’s critique. It is not a precise analysis of social conditions, but rather an angry eclectic shot at the viewers, who, perhaps only by silently observing, are in part responsible for the fact that negligible peccadillos distract from serious crimes and contribute to the division of society; that external appearances (in the form of a polished statue in a schoolyard, for example) are given precedence over internal values; that sexism, racism and nationalism are displacing democratic ideals. It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of this barrage of seemingly empty observational shots (which actually overflow with meaning), unexpected connections, erect penises and quotes from Benjamin, Brecht, Eco, Kracauer and Kundera. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is an ideal film for this age of apathy and probably the funniest winner of the Golden Bear. 85% (12.05.2021)

The excellent Radu Jude follows in the footsteps of his previous film “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” and once again harshly punishes Romanian society; and he makes us again shudders at how much of what we see can be applied to Czech reality. The film is basically about how the morally dull people who – at least according to Jude – make the majority of post-communist Romania are mentally incapable of distinguishing right from wrong and important from unimportant, and operate according to the formal morality of the nineteenth century or so. So the film presents a bunch of prudish morons, including a briber, a green brain from the army, a racist, a homophobe, a holocaust denier, an anti-Russian, and a conspiracy theorist, who blast a poor teacher who dared (imagine that!) to make a sex-tape with her husband, and you are immediately reminded of how Czech supporters of the biggest political trash persistently overlook the greatest moral sludge imaginable, but always reliably start complaining about lack of respect when someone writes that president Miloš Zeman is a treasonous whore – they only recognise the ugly word and that’s as far as their moral compass will go. (09.04.2021)

Bad Luck Banging is a more intellectual, craftier and, in its work with form and concept, more anarchic How To with John Wilson, but instead of freewheeling New York storytelling, the depraved decadence of Bucharest stands out in a blend of documentary, theatrical and narrative approaches as if Radu Jude materialised not only his corona browsing history ranging from inessential facts and thought-provoking trivia through the weeds of autistic discussion-forum rants to porn. (13.05.2021)

A supposedly intelligent film where logic is hard to find. The movie is divided into three parts. The first follows the style of the modern Romanian wave, with the camera focused on a teacher's daily routine — walking to work, walking home — almost like it's spying on her from the street. I'm used to this style in Romanian films, and sometimes I even expect it. The second part lists various interesting facts — sometimes funny, sometimes illogical, sometimes sexual. And the third part? Completely off the rails. I didn't understand it at all. (18.07.2022)