‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ Is a Voyeuristic Trespass on Romania’s Privates

Tony Sokol

Director Radu Jude’s feature satire, “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” jumps right into the action, and it’s down and dirty action. Even the kids in the background audio are playing with things which haven’t been sanitized. That’s sex in the age of Covid. The break between the opening sex escapade, where Emi (Katia Pascariu) is masked provocatively rather than for health purposes, brings on cartoon music more in keeping with a madcap romp. The elegant chapter titles are set against a pink background like a late 1960s a sex farce. It’s not that kind of comedy.

This Romanian film from Magnolia Pictures does a great job establishing the setting. Bucharest is a character in the film. We know the streets, subways, construction sites, posters, billboards, and even the funeral ribbons which read “Rest in Peace on Both Sides” on both sides. It is a busy and bustling community, everyone is masked, sometimes even over the nose, and life moves at a brisk pace in the pandemic-era. But Radu takes the time to mark the changing leaves, and almost every colorful item in every shop window. Cinematographer Marius Panduru misses no detail in his swiveling arc. The camera details meaningless debris, and architectural clutter. If you take the time to listen, you can hear the sounds of cats fucking. 

Emi is a schoolteacher, and while she doesn’t make much noise while traversing the streets of Bucharest, she explodes onto the city like stealth bomb. The personal sex tape she made with her boyfriend Eugen was uploaded onto the internet and it’s slowly becoming as viral in the city as the virus. The first part of the film is the trip back from the home of the school’s headmistress (Claudia Ieremia), after being told the tape is the subject of much discussion. Much of the story unfolds as Emi walks through the city, past the casual violence, unsolicited invitations, and buildings both new and crumbled in the disrepair of age. The problems rise like a tide under her feet, as she seeks out shelter from the noise of passing ambulances and street noise to hear the news coming at her in cell phone calls. 

During the walk, Emi finds herself in the middle of dozens of altercations, a pissed-off driver runs into an angry pedestrian, women yell at a woman on line at the supermarket as she puts back some groceries which aren’t covered by food stamps. They call her poor to her face. Just like Emi is called poor on the street because she is walking. During all this she learns the tape was taken down, and reuploaded, and Emi has to go to meet the parents who are demanding her dismissal. Emi wears a very different kind of mask as she gets it on with her husband, while he films the dirty deed. But the two visages converge while the camera looks away.

The film then takes a break, for educational purposes, like a pornographic PSA. Jude gives a glossary, broken down into almost 26 alphabetical sections. It is called “a short dictionary of anecdotes, signs, and wonders,” and includes such tidbits as the two headlines which were readied when Romania broke from Nazi Germany during World War II, one read “Long Live Stalin,” the other “Long Live Hitler.” It is a country which hedges its bets, and has little time for people of no consequence. The dictionary tells us 99 percent of all creatures that ever lived are now extinct. The montage is a barrage which encapsulates every phase of human history into its least attractive aspect. 

We hear of the church which closed its doors to the 1989 revolutionaries who were being executed, along with prayers to beloved fascists. Clips of military persecution are interspersed with snippets of erotic art and Romanian poetry. Images of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu peer over a full-frontal examination of fellatio, as the juxtaposition of politics, oppression, abuse, and sensuality highlights how society is too aroused to notice the difference. Just like the billboards promise sexual satisfaction with the purchase of any handy gizmo. We are educated on the Medusa, whose face was so horrible, men and beasts who looked at it turned to stone. We read “Parrhasios is considered the creator of pornographia, around 410 BC.” They also tell blonde jokes, drop tidbits about “Page Five Girls,” and remind us how “blow job” is the most looked up word on the internet.

All of this comes in handy during the kangaroo court trial, when the parents vote on whether to fire Emi. The montage has taught us we don’t see horrors by looking at them, but only in the images which reflect them, like a motion picture, or a sex tape uploaded to the internet. At the outdoor tribunal, socially-distanced parents pull out an iPad to watch the tape “to the happy end.” The tape is served up with a laugh. Emi is wearing a stripper-wig, she and her husband are obviously amateurs at role play, and we hear Emi yelling at her off-screen mother-in-law in between moans, groans, and spanks. Some of the parents are shocked and appalled by the embarrassing footage, others pick it apart like they are movie reviewers. 

Emi, who has had to sit through the viewing silently, has to explain how it is not her fault the video got uploaded. The person who is responsible is the person who made it available without her consent or even knowledge. She’s the victim, but the group clearly gets off on participating in the victimization. The kids shouldn’t have been able to see it anyway, it was on an adult site. It is not her fault the parents don’t monitor what their kids are watching. The parents have answers for all of these arguments. The kangaroo has spoken. The verdict is in the pouch.

Emi, the teacher, then shifts her self-defense to Romanian history, pointing out how the country’s most revered poet, Mihai Eminescu, is well known for his erotic verses. She demeans the parents’ obscenity charges as nothing compared with national sins of colonialism, and Christianity. The parents revert to individual ideologies, the tensions turn to outrage, epithets are thrown, sexist asides move to the center, and calls of slut and worse are screamed. We hear Fox News shoutouts, military officers show un-adorned faces, priests wear “I Can’t Breathe” masks. We get a visceral sense of chaos in the makeshift court. The absurdity grows slowly but in bursts. The first vote finds in favor of the teacher, but it’s noted all the men voted for her probably because they expect a taste. A second vote casts Emi out like a witch fit to be burned at a stake. 

“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” slaps boredom in the face, kicks hypocrisy in the balls, and turns every petty judgement on itself. Jude shuffles out three different endings. The third, which is the best, is a sick revenge fantasy of female empowerment gone tantric. An execution worthy of a Caesar, if orchestrated by Caligula, and proving history doesn’t change commonplace unhappiness. Humanity will still be miserable after covid is eradicated, culture will still be defined by the porn aesthetic, and social media will keep us all at each other’s throats, where the best laughter is caught.

Jude jams two different types of movies into each other, with a strange interlude whose origins go back to Groucho Marx and Eugene O’Neill. “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” is equal parts Jean-Luc Godard and John Waters, but it most resembles Serbian director Dušan Makavejev’s 1971 subversive masterpiece “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism.” The rebellion is alive, and the battle fought over communist politics and sexuality, Christian condemnation and erotic socialism, crucifixes or dildos. 

“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” releases  Nov. 19 in select theaters.