A curious cultural shift happened over the last couple of decades, with the rise of the broadband internet (well, many curious things took place, of course, but work with me): The ubiquity of full-bore pornography, available in almost any form and kink, took the sting of shame out of the equation. No longer relegated to bachelor parties and seedy theaters on the bad side of town, watching other people having sex in this country lost its stigma, such that it has become a largely accepted form of legitimate entertainment. Brought up from the deepest, dankest part of the basement out into the light, porn has become fully ingrained in our culture, for better or worse.
This cultural shift has not been lost on filmmakers. Porn -- in its fabrication, creation, enjoyment, and proto-feminist politics -- has become a de rigeur subject in what we can call non-porn cinema, and TV shows. As a current quick scan of titles -- witness "Pam & Tommy" currently running on Hulu, a fictionalized series about the unauthorized release of the infamous Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape from the mid-'90s; Ti West's just released '70s slasher throwback, "X," concerning a DIY crew of would-be porn makers who choose the wrong desolate Texas farmhouse to conduct their horny business; and Ninja Thyberg's "Pleasure," following the travails of a young Swedish woman, come to L.A. determined to become an adult-film superstar, no matter the cost -- suggests, pornography has become legitimized.
The opening salvo in Romanian director Radu Jude's audacious "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn," finally available to American audiences (a visually censored version is currently streaming on Hulu) proves the addendum to its title. The first few minutes of screentime come from a homemade sex tape, shot between a married couple in Romania, and it holds little back. It literally is porn, by definition of visible, penetrative sex, but don't let that deter you from watching it. One of the best films to premiere last year, its stinging social commentary couldn't be more prescient, so here's a way to approach the film in the manner it was intended.
But, it's real porn, right? Well, we don't actually know whether the actors -- Stefan Steel, and a terrific Katia Pascariu -- are engaging in actual sex, or a super-realistic facsimile, but for the purposes of the film, a satiric social commentary and seething covid-era time capsule, it doesn't much matter. Pascariu's character, Emilia, works as a elementary school teacher, so when the sex tape of her and her husband, Eugen (Steel), gets uploaded to the internet (Emilia blames Eugen himself, but it remains unclear exactly how it happens), the parents of her students go completely bananas, leading to an outdoor confrontation between Emilia and the outraged parents, as moderated (loosely) by the school principal (Claudia Ieremia). The point of it is to be provocative, in other words, even if the sex depicted is perfectly normal and consensual. Also worth noting, the intimacy of the "tape" is startlingly real and feels anchored in an actual marriage (ie. it's a pair of somewhat haggard middle-aged people enjoying a brief stretch of adult time with each other). This isn't some Adrian Lyne-type cheesy eroticism, designed to sell tickets through titillation. In fact, the couples' conjoining is so intimate, it's very much as if you're intruding in their personal space, an effect Jude very much wants us to feel (especially when Emilia's elderly mother keeps knocking on their door, reminding her daughter to pick up her prescriptions).
Wait, how did it get uploaded, again? This is very much unclear. Initially, Emilia tells the headmistress it was done by a couple of dudes at a repair shop, but later she admits Eugen uploaded the video. However, later on, while on the phone with Eugen, she tells him how she blamed him for it to protect herself, which suggests she was the one who actually put it online (which would explain why she seems to have no animosity toward her husband for actively putting her job in peril). If it were Emilia herself, why would she take such an insane risk? The film never answers that question, but we find out more of her philosophy in the third section.
What's with that long scene of Emilia just walking around? After the sex-tape preamble, the film is divided into three parts, the first of which, titled "One-Way Street," does indeed feature Emilia, having already been made aware of her tape being made public, running casual errands in Bucharest, en route to meeting with the school's headmistress (at her completely chaotic apartment), to talk about the forthcoming parents' meeting. It could seem meandering (as several of my critic friends found it), but there's much more going on than you might at first realize. Note how Jude's camera swings away from his protagonist from time to time to show other details -- a billboard of a martial arts academy named "Superkombat," a lone green weed growing from a shattered sidewalk crack, the constant construction going on all around her as she walks, through crowded streets, everyone either wearing a mask or having lowered it from their face -- to give us a sense of this particular pandemic moment in time. Not for nothing is there such hostility in the street, from the usual animosity between drivers and pedestrians attempting to cross, to the horrific sound of a pair of furious cats screeching and hissing at each other.
In a couple of particularly extraordinary exchanges, Jude's camera catches onlookers approaching directly (one older woman at an outdoor market makes a particularly graphic command by way of showing her annoyance at the camera's presence) -- we might assume Jude didn't set up these scenes with extras, as much as shoot on the fly as Pascariu waded through the crowds. Even the giant white bunny mascot at a department store curses out Emilia when she playfully tweaks its nose. By the time an angry pedestrian actually gets rammed into by a furious driver, you can feel the frustration and enmity bubbling off the baking asphalt.
Why is there a glossary? The second section takes us out of the principal narrative with Emilia, and instead offers a helpful guide (with "anecdotes, sides, and wonders") to many of the Romanian terms and concepts the film (even if vaguely) touches on, via a scorchingly funny A-Z primer. There, you will learn some Romanian history from Jude's perspective, such as how the military has always been used to oppress its citizens, how the Romanian Orthodox Church has aligned itself with dictators, and some fun facts about former president/dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Along the way, you'll also get some "blonde jokes," philosophy about the Gorgon Medusa, references to the way in which children are political prisoners of their parents, notes about the beloved Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, and several more profane elements that some people will find vulgar, and others, perfectly kooky. Much as with the first section, part two gives us more cultural context as to what happens and why.
How am I meant to interpret the parents' meeting? The final section of the film -- a heady mix of political debate and almost total farce titled "Praxis and innuendos (sitcom)" -- brings us Emilia's confrontation with the outraged parents of her students, sitting spread out in the school courtyard. Under the auspices of the headmistress, Emilia is forced to sit in front of them, behind a school desk, like a defendant in a murder trial, suffering their rage ("She defiles the school!"), ignorance, and politicized griping. One parent insists the original recording is shown in front of everyone in attendance: Emilia has to sit there, as everyone crowds around the woman's iPad to watch (one parent in the military takes this moment to peel and eat a banana, only adding to the absurdism).
The crowd consists of a rogue's gallery of types -- the outraged, repressed mother ("Children should be protected from horrors!"); the smarmy military officer, irrelevantly touting the excellence of the armed forces ("The Romanian army reached even the Tatra Mountains!"); the indignant racist, a pilot named Mr. Otopeanu, who objects to having to wear a mask, and takes umbrage at Emilia's argument that there was nothing wrong with her sleeping with her husband ("That's what whores do," he explains); the progressive intellectual, who supports Emilia freedom to do as she pleases ("Thomas Kuhn speaks of thought patterns, of paradigms, not of eternal truths"); the older man, clearly turned on by the whole thing but pretending to be upset ("The slut is getting cheeky!"); the severe, judgmental businesswoman ("Her husband is fat!"); the aggrieved anti-Semitic matron ("How dare you indoctrinate our children with filthy Jewish propaganda, instead of teaching them about Stephen the Great?") and so forth. As the conversation winds around -- Emilia, trying to maintain her dignity, many of the parents snickering and making jokes in an attempt to shame her (one man repeatedly does a Woody Woodpecker laugh to mock her) -- we get a perfect cross-section of political discourse at the present moment, filled with indignation, rage, unsympathy, and smarmy churlishness (Jude also takes the opportunity for further impishness by giving many of the characters appropriate mask signs). All before the chaos of the ending, in which three possible outcomes are portrayed -- including "The Film Was But a Joke," in which she stays on, but a physical brawl ensues; "We've only kept you a moment," where she is forced to resign; and, lastly, "The film was but a joke, and here it ends," whose graphic satire I will leave for you to experience for yourselves.
OK, but seriously, why should I watch this smutty movie about another country? Because it's funny, and poignant, and speaks to this era of world-wide covid culture and furious political tribalism, in a way that is absolutely revelatory in its brutally honest depiction of where we are. Covid rules had it that we needed to keep six feet apart, but society ensures that we are already miles away from one another. Jude's film is a perfect portrait of current Romanian society in microcosm, one that should seem all too familiar across the globe. My advice: Don't get hung up about the graphic sex that begins its bawdy ruminations, instead focus on the indelible portrayal of a time in human history in which our personal and private lives are up for grabs in virtual space, and our essential humanity is threatened by tribal exceptionalism. For obvious reasons, it's not for everyone, but if you approach it with an open mind, you will be richly rewarded.