Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn Review

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a Romanian comedy-drama that examines the issues affecting Romania through the prism of a sex tape scandal.

Emi Cilibiu (Katia Pascarlu) is a teacher at a prestigious school. Her reputation is put into disrepute after a sex tape with her husband gets leaked online. Emi must fight to save her job and deal with the strains on her mental health.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a film that has received a lot of praise. It won the Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and Romania has selected the film as their entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But the IMDB score is only 6.8 at the time of writing. It was one of the films where the critical and audience reactions were different.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was a film that was split into three chapters, as well as a prologue and epilogue. The film opens with the sex tape which did look like amateur porn. The three chapters were showing Emi walking around Bucharest before the conference with the parents, the second was a montage of images and videos, and the third was the conference. This led to the biggest issue of the film: a lack of narrative drive.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn had a great hook for a story. There were many story ideas like people finding out about the sex tape leak, the impact it has on the main character, the pupils mocking the teacher, and the risk to the teacher’s job. However, writer/director Radu Jude went for a broader and more abstract approach.

This abstract approach was most evident during the second chapter. This was the montage of pictures and videos and it felt like it belonged in an art gallery instead of a film. The aim of the montage was to show Romanian History and explore issues like sexism, misogyny, and racism. For audience members who don’t have knowledge about Romanian history and culture it was a useful snapshot, but it doesn’t work in the structure of a film. It came off as Jude was trying to replicate Lars von Trier’s approach when he made Nymphomaniac, but Nymphomaniac had a framing device to justify its tangents. This montage was made pointless because the third chapter explored many of these issues anyway.

The first chapter was when Emi was walking around the city. This was a drawn-out experience since a lot of this section was just showing Emi walking down a street or crossing the road. Many of these scenes felt like they would have been cut out from a more traditional film. The only time these walking scenes became important was when Emi passed a sexually suggestive billboard for ice cream and when Emi got into an argument with a driver. One was a thematic image; the other showed Emi had a temper.

The most important moment in this chapter was when Emi went to a pharmacy to get a pill for anxiety. During her trip Emi overheard conversations that showcased the wider issues in Romania like the divide between rich and poor, and some people complaining about COVID restrictions. The aim was to give audiences a flavour of the issues affecting Romania in 2020.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn came to life during the third chapter. This was when there was some dramatic weight because Emi was fighting to keep her job against a hostile crowd of parents. The parents represented different aspects of Romanian society. There was a military officer, an airport pilot, a Romany woman, an émigré from the Czech Republic, and a moral uptight woman who can be compared to Helen Lovejoy. I’m surprised someone didn’t say ‘won’t something think of the children!’ Some of the parents were genuinely outraged and question how Emi could have any authority in the classroom. Others used the scandal as an excuse to try and get rid of Emi because they have personal issues with the teacher or want someone to teach a more nationalistic syllabus.

This chapter was more like a play because it was set mostly in one location. This was a scene about the character interaction as the parents were arguing with Emi and amongst themselves. This helped focus the film on its characters and the themes that the filmmakers wanted to express.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a film that fans of art-house cinema and people who like a more avant-garde approach will love it for its themes and message. People who prefer a more traditional narrative will find it harder to get invested in and see Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn as nothing more than pretentious twaddle.

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