107 mins |
Rated
R18 (Explicit sex scenes & offensive language)
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn won the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear Award for Best Film back in February perhaps in part because it captures the chaos in our global zeitgeist. What happens when a broken society unsteadily clawing its way back from the ravages of authoritarian dictatorship is then struck down by a global pandemic?
A cheerfully explicit homemade sex-tape, filmed by a robustly happy couple with a mild kink in their sex life, is the peep-show opener which sets the scene for the couple’s life to unravel. The sex-tape quickly ends up on the internet and schoolteacher Emi is vilified – as much, it seems, for having such enthusiastic sex with her husband as for ending up on the net.
Radu Jude spins off the middle act into a joyously experimental realm of archive footage, contemplating fragments of the 20th century and diving down etymological rabbit holes pondering the power of the word. Jude returns us, in a powerhouse third act, to Emi’s plight, where her community have placed her on trial; archetypes from that other mid-century master Bertolt Brecht creep in from the wings, their protest placards left just off-camera but voices loud and strident.
Under cross examination, Emi provides a voice of reason in the rising cacophony of hypocrisy, amid salacious demands for replaying of the ‘evidence’; an extreme instance of institutionalised slut shaming.
Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna would find a kindred spirit in beleaguered Emi, while we might find too many echoes of modern life lurking just below the surface of the absurd. — MR
"It’s a daring and hilarious cinematic gamble that gives a justifiable middle finger to the sheer insanity of the Western world – and it’s also an unpredictable blast, and an angry editorial cartoon that invites us into its outrage.” — Eric Kohn, Indiewire
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Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn won the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear Award for Best Film back in February perhaps in part because it captures the chaos in our global zeitgeist. What happens when a broken society unsteadily clawing its way back from the ravages of authoritarian dictatorship is then struck down by a global pandemic?
A cheerfully explicit homemade sex-tape, filmed by a robustly happy couple with a mild kink in their sex life, is the peep-show opener which sets the scene for the couple’s life to unravel. The sex-tape quickly ends up on the internet and schoolteacher Emi is vilified – as much, it seems, for having such enthusiastic sex with her husband as for ending up on the net.
Radu Jude spins off the middle act into a joyously experimental realm of archive footage, contemplating fragments of the 20th century and diving down etymological rabbit holes pondering the power of the word. Jude returns us, in a powerhouse third act, to Emi’s plight, where her community have placed her on trial; archetypes from that other mid-century master Bertolt Brecht creep in from the wings, their protest placards left just off-camera but voices loud and strident.
Under cross examination, Emi provides a voice of reason in the rising cacophony of hypocrisy, amid salacious demands for replaying of the ‘evidence’; an extreme instance of institutionalised slut shaming.
Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna would find a kindred spirit in beleaguered Emi, while we might find too many echoes of modern life lurking just below the surface of the absurd. — MR
"It’s a daring and hilarious cinematic gamble that gives a justifiable middle finger to the sheer insanity of the Western world – and it’s also an unpredictable blast, and an angry editorial cartoon that invites us into its outrage.” — Eric Kohn, Indiewire