Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (a title that sounds like misheard lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”) is specific enough to be a filmmaker’s vision.  The problem is writer/director Radu Jude hasn’t found a cohesive or accessible way to deliver that vision to audiences.

Jude has separated their movie into three chapters, but they all feel like their own experimental short film.  The prologue features an extremely graphic, unsimulated sex tape with dialogue so outrageous, the viewer can’t help but giggle from shock.  The audience is prepared for a movie that will continue in this register.  What follows is the woman on the tape, a school teacher named Emi (Katia Pascariu), walking around a busy city in long static sequences.  She runs errands and occasionally talks to people about how her sex tape has been leaked online and she’s having to attend a parent-teacher conference that evening.  These sequences are so boring, that we can’t help but wonder if the would-be humour is supposed to derive from the jarring contrast between the wild intro and Emi’s mundane routine.

After the errands comes a montage of images and videos that are supposed to point out some of society’s hypocrisies;  perhaps foreshadowing the showdown at the parent-teacher conference that will result in discussions and debates of taboos.  But again, these drawn out and awkward comparisons are so dull that the audience can’t help but feel like the decrease in interest s supposed to play a factor in the film’s storytelling.  The parent-teacher conference – the final chapter – is exactly what we expect aside from some last-ditch attempts to earn some cheap laughs with alternate endings.

If Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn does anything effective, it’s that the movie has captured the agitation of dealing with additional personal complications during the current pandemic.  Radu Jude has incorporated a climate of social distancing and mask mandates into this story that feels natural and relatable.  To certain viewers, this film may even be a cathartic experience. But for me, this was a pretentious flick searching for a point.  A meta sex tape, if you will, featuring a three-way between Radu Jude, his indecipherable filmmaking, and his conceited script fondling each other in a hardcore embrace.

**********

Do You Tweet? Follow These Tweeple:

Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie