SummaryEmi (Katia Pascariu), a schoolteacher, finds her reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is uploaded onto the internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender.
SummaryEmi (Katia Pascariu), a schoolteacher, finds her reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is uploaded onto the internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender.
There is almost zero chance that this film escapes the festival or art-house circuit to become a mainstream cultural artifact – its sexually explicit material all but guarantees it – but Jude’s work is an almost profound act of high-wire lampoonery that deserves to be seen and debated far and wide.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a frustratingly brilliant (and brilliantly frustrating) experience that formally doesn’t really have a contemporary cinematic referent, an eyeball-slicing polemic by a bomb-throwing provocateur.
While Jude succeeds at lampooning the chaos of contemporary political discourse, Bad Luck Banging takes on a few too many issues to make a coherent statement on any of them.
Whatever the film’s flaws, this is certainly the most unrepentantly confrontational work we’ve yet seen from Jude - and perhaps from any Romanian director. And, as the beleaguered, improbable figure of scandal at the centre of it all, stage actress Pascariu impresses with a crisply reserved performance.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is provocative and irritating — and intentionally so. That makes it particularly annoying, because even as you’re provoked and irritated, you are also aware that writer-director Radu Jude wanted you to feel that way.
Production Company
microFILM,
Paul Thiltges Distributions,
Endorfilm,
Kinorama,
Bord Cadre Films,
Sovereign Films (II),
Aqua Carpatica,
ArteKino International,
Covalact,
Hrvatski Audiovizualni Centar (HAVC),
Luxembourg Film Fund,
The Czech Republic State Fund for Support and Development of Cinematography