Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is certainly one of the greatest festival winners in recent years—a designation I don’t assign just (just) because of the name. Radu Jude’s Berlinale smash is bold in ways most films don’t even dream: opening with hardcore pornography, settling into an etymology lesson for its whole middle stretch, and closing with an ethics debate. It’s also funny—not knowing-chuckle arthouse funny, but actually earns laughs—and secretly a great study of why a global pandemic didn’t change how awful people are.
Magnolia will release the film on November 19, ahead of which there is a trailer. As we said in our quoted review, “It is an incendiary, playful, and wonderfully exasperated piece of filmmaking that shows a director trying to draw some threads of sense from our current malaise.”
Find preview and poster below:
Emi (Katia Pascariu), a schoolteacher, finds her reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is uploaded onto the internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender. BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN is a film in three loosely connected parts: a walk in the city of Bucharest, then a playful essay on obscenities, all culminating, in the third part, in an incendiary comic confrontation.
