Get ready for a good hard look at society!
To say that things have felt chaotic this past two years is putting it lightly. The current political climate and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has continued to heighten the senses of the world population. and angers feels like it is being lashed out in different directions. When one really looks at certain controversies, they will find that a good collection of them stem from conflicting values. While unshared values are inevitable and seem harmless, some conflicts like these lead to real world consequences that affect the lives of objectively innocent people, and many of them tend to stem from the Internet.
This idea of conflicting values and real world consequences are explored in Radu Jude’s latest film, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.’ The plot of the film centers on a Romanian schoolteacher named Katia, who filmed a sex tape with her husband. Unbeknownst to her, the video gets uploaded to the Internet, and to make matters worse, some of her students came across the video and told their parents. These parents, in turn, call for a PTA meeting to have her fired from her job.
In regards to structure, the film is divided into three acts, the first being Katia preparing for her long and treacherous walk to the school to attend the PTA meeting. The second act is a montage of concepts and objects accompanied by their definitions which range from playfully erotic to objectively depressing. The third and final act is of the PTA meeting where Katia defends herself against her students’ parents, who ridicule her to a massive degree. After the final act, similar to the 1985 classic Clue, there are three different conclusions that wrap up the story, and unlike Clue, the audience gets to see them altogether in theaters!
What immediately stands out in this film’s structure is the second act, which seems out of place and grinds the pacing to a halt. Some films, however, are like paintings, and they require more a look beneath the surface, and while this does seem like an unusual choice, it does serve a purpose. Some of the objects that appear in this montage are shown to have been named in honor of a horrific event in human history, in one such case, Romanian Revolution wine being named after the deadly revolution of the same name. What writer/director Radu Jude seems to be conveying with this choice is how the public tends to be hypocritical when deciding what it values and what it condemns. To see that people will honor a tragic massacre involving mass slaughter while condemning a schoolteacher who has valid defenses against her situation only demonstrates how adrift value systems are.
In the third act, as Katia Uighur facing off against the angry mod, some of the things and people that appear in the montage are referenced by some of the parents. It is an interesting
While this film, overall, is a
people tend to make bigger deals out of situations that truly don’t need to be. One
Anyone seeking a compelling film that is more surface level than usual will sadly not find one in this film due to its slow and uneven pacing. It’s execution may be a bit too experiemental and unclear for most viewers, but the film manages to linger in thought after viewing. This film feels more in service of planting ideas in an audiences consciousness and less on telling a proper narrative.
