BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: When Private Goes Public

How do you define obscenity? Certainly, there are different degrees of the obscene, some more offensive—and more dangerous—than others. Many would consider pornography obscene, but be honest with yourself: where does it rank on a spectrum that includes violence, racism, and other horrors from human history? In his latest film, which won the Golden Bear at the 2021 Berlinale, Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude seeks to expose the hypocrisy inherent in those who find sex more obscene and offensive than the horrors we hear about every day on the news, glorify in our culture, and even pass as we walk down the street.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn chronicles the uproar that ensues when an amateur porno tape starring a teacher at a prestigious school is accidentally uploaded to the Internet. A satirical story told in three parts, the film has a lot to say about what we choose to be offended by in our everyday lives and practically dares the audience to be offended by its own content. Yet with the exception of the film’s already infamous opening scene, much of Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is actually less provocative than it is pretentious.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn lives up to its title in the film’s opening frames, for it begins by showing us the sex tape that ends up getting our heroine, Emi (the wonderful Katia Pascariu), in trouble with the school where she teaches history. And yes, we’re talking scenes of actual graphic pornography, albeit generally hilarious ones that feature, among other things, wigs, whips, and an awkward interruption from someone out in the hall asking if Emi has had their prescription refilled. It’s clear that Jude is trying to shock the audience into admitting that they too think what Emi is doing is obscene; this is not the last of the super-obvious tactics Jude employs to get his message across in this film, but it is certainly the most startling.

When Emi’s husband takes the laptop to an IT store for repairs, this private video finds its way onto the Internet—and, naturally, onto the cell phones of Emi’s middle school-aged students. In the first segment following the film’s inauspicious introduction, we follow Emi as she seems to walk the entire city of Bucharest, running errands and taking phone calls. She stops in to see the school’s headmaster, who warns Emi that the children’s parents are outraged and demanding a meeting. She gets a call from her husband, who warns her that while the video had been taken down, it has somehow been uploaded again.

All the while, the camera following her floats around Bucharest, often drifting away from Emi to zero in on peeling posters, piles of trash, and tired passersby. The city and its residents both show signs of the wear and tear of the COVID-19 lockdown; Jude shot the film in the fall of 2020 and chose to make the ongoing pandemic part of Emi’s story. This means characters are mostly wearing masks and subtle references to cleaning and sanitizing pepper the film much as they now do in our everyday lives. By choosing to make the pandemic and its effects on people a part of his film, Jude makes Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn hit home much harder than if he had ignored them; even though it is obviously satire, one cannot deny that his film is reflecting the state of our world right now.

The middle section of Bad Lucky Banging or Loony Porn is a departure, taking the form of a montage of photos and videos illustrating Jude’s definitions of 26  alphabetical terms ranging from blow j*bs to the military to Mihai Eminescu, the influential Romanian poet. This “dictionary” touches on the horrors of Ceaușescu’s reign as well as the atrocities committed by Romanian soldiers against Jewish and Roma people during World War II, and also includes a disturbing little cell phone video of a man screaming through a translator at employees who are demanding the wages they’re owed. What’s truly obscene, Jude seems to be asking us, a woman giving her husband a blow j*b or soldiers murdering minorities at a rapid pace so they could enjoy the Christmas holiday in peace? Why do we insist one is inappropriate for children but teach the other in our schools?

Passing Judgment

The final part of the triptych consists of Emi’s meeting with the furious parents, which takes the form of a socially distanced kangaroo court where Emi is subject to an onslaught of verbal abuse. Much of it has its roots in misogyny—only whores act the way Emi did on camera, they argue, even as Emi declares there’s nothing wrong with a married couple doing what they did—but it soon takes several turns into racism, anti-Semitism, and fascism. As a history teacher, Emi also dares to teach her students about the Holocaust—Jewish propagandist, they scream—and read them Soviet writings—Communist traitor, they cry. The verbal violence even veers into the physical, with the headmistress begging everyone to keep their masks on and maintain social distance, to little avail.

All the while, Emi insists that she is not the one in the wrong, for she never intended to upload the video, and what she does at home should have no bearing on what she does in the classroom. Her refusal to give in under pressure is admirable, especially when one particularly self-righteous mother stands before the group and plays the video in question for them on a tablet, so they can all see what Emi is supposedly guilty of. It’s a painfully awkward moment of public humiliation as the parents—especially the men—move to stand close to the tablet so they can leer at Emi engaging in intimate acts with her husband while she sits, masked and impassive, at a table close by. The video is offensive, they declare, but from the lascivious looks that are obvious even on their masked faces, it’s clear what they really think.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn culminates with a wild choose-your-ending series of potential endings, for as Jude reminds us, this is merely a sketch for a popular film—unfinished, open-ended, and subject to interpretation. Yet by the time this all started going down (no pun intended), I felt as exhausted as Emi looked. While the second segment of the film uses the technique of montage to cleverly highlight our hypocrisy by juxtaposing different things that could be called obscene, the third is much more heavy-handed, relying on a non-stop barrage of screaming that highlights how grotesque the parents actually are in comparison with the calm, intelligent Emi, despite their belief to the contrary. It wasn’t long before I too wanted to scream: I get it! I understand what you’re trying to say! They’re the ones who are truly offensive: allowing their patriotism to erase the horrors of the past so that they can be repeated again in the future, using respectability as a shield for whatever unpleasant activities they might get up to in their own private lives. But when you already agree with that message, the tactics used to get it across in the film’s final scenes feel all the more obnoxious.

Conclusion

One can appreciate everything a film is trying to say without really appreciating the film itself. At least, that’s how I felt about Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. Yes, hypocrisy and prejudice in our societies deserve to be exposed and satirized—and this film does a hell of a job at making people guilty of those attitudes look like the idiots they are—but it’s so infatuated with its own self-importance and snark that it irritates just as much as it entertains.

What do you think? Are you a fan of Romanian cinema? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn will be released in the U.S. on November 19, 2021. You can find more international release dates here.

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