Sexo desafortunado o Porno loco

I watched this movie knowing only the title, and I believe the element of surprise elevated the experience. Without spoiling the story, I can say that this movie is perfectly described as a roller coaster ride.

In the beginning of the ride, you have a steady climb ahead of you, which takes its time to get to a high altitude. You keep going upvery slowly, and all you can see is the track going up. The main character is introduced, and we follow her for a good while.

Then, the roller coaster slows down and halts at the top. There's a change of chapter and you're not sure about what's coming next. A dictionary of different words is displayed through text and visuals, words that aren't necessarily interconnected. Then, when you least expected it, the roller coaster gains a lot of speed and goes all over the place super fast. You don't even have time to process everything that you're seeing and you can't see where this is going to take you. You even get a bit confused and scared about how long this part is going to last, yet you can't escape the ride yet.

Then, when you're shaken up for the rollercoaster, the ride suddenly starts going slower as you get to a more steady track, and you realise that the end of the ride may arrive soon. The story returns to the teacher and we find out her fate. Here, the conservative nature of the Romanian culture is displayed, with moments of humour, frustration and seriousness, with many stereotypes of people showing their true colours and values.

But then... the roller coaster reveals a loop out of nowhere, that leaves you upside down and then the ride ends really abruptly. You don't know what just happened, you don't know how to react and as you're unbuckling your seatbelt and leaving the premises, you're still confused as hell.

This review may be relatable to the people who have seen this movie, yet may leave people who haven't seen it yet really confused. And I'm still confused about this movie myself, and this is the best way I can describe this.

I recommend people to watch this movie. As confused about how to feel about this movie, I think this is an excellent thought-provoking experience which could start a debate about real-life cultural problems.

Jude is the most experimental, controversial and radical romanian filmmaker: his films never cease to offer a poignant satire of society, irredentism, or his country.

His latest film is a prime example of his peculiarities. The subject is a leaked sextape of a teacher, and the scandal it rises among parents.

The opening of the film features the actual footage of an explicit, unsimulated sextape, not for the purposes of realism (as it could have been with any other Romanian New Wave director), but to force the viewer in the act of voyeurism that will be very blatantly shown in the third act: this chapter of the film features a sort of "trial", in which the teacher is forced to face the parents of her students. When one of the parents shows the video to the others with the purpose of "showing things for what they are", the other parents mock the teacher, laugh, or watch with perverse passion. Through this external sight, the viewer is thus confronted with the reaction they probably displayed at the beginning, a very clever way to involve the audience.

The previous two chapters of this three-chapter story each have their own purpose. The second chapter is a sort of glossary/collection of anecdotes, which introduces briefly all the notions that are later mentioned in the discussion of the third act: not only sex or equality related concepts, but domestic violence, history and romanian historical episodes (as that is the teacher's subject), philosophical concepts, even a metacinematic consideration, all with the goal of preparing the viewer for the final act. It is not only a way to put all viewers on the same page, but also to make explicit the thematic range of the film.

The first chapter features Emi (the teacher) walking around Bucharest doing chores. Through her journey, Jude shows the city as it is under the pandemic (the film was entirely shot last year) and its effects of distress on people, more and more nervous, without disdaining some subtle visual digressions.

While Jude makes very clear which side he supports in the debate of the third chapter, he chooses to give three different endings to the story, which I won't disclose, maybe to thus imply that the viewer has to judge for theirself.

This film is a artistic criticism of Romanian society. Chapter 1 is all porn and boredom. Mainly it's main character walking under the ads of film sponsors. Chapter 2 and 3 are pure art. Chapter 2 is a pure satire on all world societies. Chapter 3 is a ode to hypocrisy of all human kind. It's worth watching, but don't expect much. Just try to bare the 1. Chapter. Rest of the film is good.

'Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn' is an unorthodox, provocative, scathing piece of moviemaking that due to its low crowd-pleasing coefficient will likely not be for everyone. Since I have no problem with significant amounts of in-your-face-attitude on the director's side, I quite liked it.

Architecturally, the movies borrows from some examples of French Nouvelle Vague Cinema - if I had a better memory, I could tell you exactly which ones - in that the camera frequently and in its center piece completely deviates from the dealings of its protagonists. In this way, a film that starts off with a story about an instance of accidental pornography widens its scope dramatically to become nothing less than a satirical portrait of a pornographic (Romanian, but just Romanian?) society. Using 'pornography' as an abstract (anti-)moral topos reminded me of Samuel Maoz' 'Foxtrot'.

While I think that the dramaturgic fundamentals of the movie are well thought through, I also think the movie could have been even better. Especially in the third part, the discussion of the matter at hand meanders quite a bit, can be tedious, and will probably not escape all charges of weisenheimery.

Bottom line is, that most viewers will probably switch it off at one point in complacent disgust. If you make it to the end, though, you will not see its explosive, weapons-grade finale coming, which is again well in line with its subversive intentions.

This NSFW satire can be hilarious (and insightful) sometimes. But, aside from being a commentary about the collective hypocrisy or the decay of humanity, its unconventional style in the story-telling tends to hinder the film to be more than just a didactic and somewhat preachy (if not pretentious) rhetoric.