Bad Luck Banging. (18.)
Directed by Radu Jude.
Starring Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Malai. Subtitled. In cinemas. 106 mins.
This pandemic set Romanian provocation offers up three minutes of excitement followed by over an hour and a half of boredom. In the beginning, Emi (Pascariu) a history teacher at a prestigious school in Bucharest makes a sex tape with her husband. That would be the three minutes of excitement. The rest of the film is her attempts to avoid getting the sack after it is uploaded onto the internet. Overall I think I preferred the boredom to the excitement – I must be a real critic now.
It's an exercise in pushing audiences to the limit. The sex scenes are graphic and unsimulated but that's probably the least provocative part of the film. For the next half hour, Part I follows her through pandemic Bucharest filming her from a distant fixed camera mimicking the view of a surveillance camera. Part II, "a short dictionary of anecdotes, signs and wonders" is a scattershot collection of brief sketches and observations, before Part III wraps up Emilia's story. Jude's film is breezily irreverent in both style and content but also a little bit po-faced. It appears very now with its masked cast and focus on internet porn but this kind of satirical porn is very 60s, I Am Curious (Yellow or Blue.) I liked the originality but wonder if this piece of revenge porn has much to say other than writer/ director Jude really hates his homeland.
Directed by Radu Jude.
Starring Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Malai. Subtitled. In cinemas. 106 mins.
This pandemic set Romanian provocation offers up three minutes of excitement followed by over an hour and a half of boredom. In the beginning, Emi (Pascariu) a history teacher at a prestigious school in Bucharest makes a sex tape with her husband. That would be the three minutes of excitement. The rest of the film is her attempts to avoid getting the sack after it is uploaded onto the internet. Overall I think I preferred the boredom to the excitement – I must be a real critic now.
It's an exercise in pushing audiences to the limit. The sex scenes are graphic and unsimulated but that's probably the least provocative part of the film. For the next half hour, Part I follows her through pandemic Bucharest filming her from a distant fixed camera mimicking the view of a surveillance camera. Part II, "a short dictionary of anecdotes, signs and wonders" is a scattershot collection of brief sketches and observations, before Part III wraps up Emilia's story. Jude's film is breezily irreverent in both style and content but also a little bit po-faced. It appears very now with its masked cast and focus on internet porn but this kind of satirical porn is very 60s, I Am Curious (Yellow or Blue.) I liked the originality but wonder if this piece of revenge porn has much to say other than writer/ director Jude really hates his homeland.
