LGM Film Club, Part 440: Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn
By 
This wild 2021 film from the Romanian director Radu Jude is a glorious mess. The story is this–an award-winning teacher at an elite Bucharest private school films herself and her husband having sex. Her idiot husband uploads to it some private site. Someone then places it on Porn Hub. There’s outrage from the parents and her job is on the line. That’s plenty enough for an interesting film, but Jude has bigger fish to fry, which is the hypocrisy and corruption of Romanian society. Then he started filming this in 2020 and Romania, which is filled with far-right propaganda, had one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe. So he took on Romanians’ idiocy on this too. Then in the middle of the film, he has a 20 minute bit of film essay when he “defines” a lot of words as to how they matter in Romanian society, an excuse for him to show photographs of how Romanians supported the Nazis and then turned right around to support the Stalinists, the widespread abuse of children in Romanian society, the excuses Romanians make to say sexual assault is OK.
Oh, and he made the film as explicit as possible. The version streaming on Amazon that I saw is censored and he had fun with that too, having cheeky graphics over the sex tape, which is played repeatedly. But the original? It shows it all.
Between the essay are two parts. The first is the teacher walking around dealing with the stress of this, which is largely an excuse for Jude to film on the streets during the pandemic and expound on how horrible Romanians treat each other. The second is the meeting between the teacher and the parents. Not surprisingly, this goes off the rails, as the parents not only think she’s a slut, but start accusing her of pushing Jewish propaganda about the Holocaust, ranting about the gays, and of course hating the Roma.
And then there’s the three possible endings he provides the film, one of which includes a dildo.
It’s hilarious, brilliant, and a complete mess. It’s pretty broadly drawn, not always to its benefit. It’s really hard to rate. You could think of it as a 10 or you could think of it is a 4. I don’t even know how to evaluate this film. It’s well worth your time though, that’s for sure. You haven’t seen a film like this before. It’s a lot more interesting than whatever shitty Netflix show you are watching.
Due to its content, I can’t embed the trailer, but here’s a link.