A few years ago (2019) Romania produced a documentary called Collective that was nominated for two Oscars, for best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature. It was one of those documentaries that does not find its greatness in art but in journalism. It chronicled a story of corruption on an absurd level. A fire broke out in a nightclub in Bucharest instantly killing twenty-seven people and hospitalizing 180 more with severe burns. Of those 180, 37 inexplicably die in hospital burn wards. It turns out local corruption resulted in hospitals purchasing diluted and/or fake disinfectants. The documentary chronicles the efforts of a reformer who attempts to fix this system against corrupt lobbyists and disinformation propagated by the local media. By the end of the movie, he has been voted out of office and witnesses a man that is legally barred from managing a hospital appointed to replace him. He has a phone conversation with his father who wonders why he is still living in Romania. There is nothing for you here.
“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” is the comedic equivalent of that sober documentary. It chronicles a humiliating day in the life of Emi (Katia Pascariu), a teacher at a private high school who faces removal once a sex tape she made with her husband leaks on the internet. It is unclear exactly how the video got there, either her husband uploaded it or a computer repair man did it, but it is out there now and every time she succeeds in getting it removed on one website, it keeps popping up somewhere else. Meanwhile, there is a COVID-19 pandemic gripping the country that is pervasive in every scene. What do I mean by that? Well, everyone in the movie wears masks and socially distances in every scene. This movie leans into the pandemic like no other movie has so far in this new time. It adds levels of absurdity and frustration onto every scene. If younger generations ever ask not what happened in 2020-2021, but how it felt to live in 2020-2021, this would be perfect movie to show them.
The movie is divided into three parts. The first part involves Emi walking around town, doing errands on her way to parent-teacher conference. She walks past incompetent city administration, rude people, and the general annoyances of living. The second part involves a slide show dictionary of Romanian words. The writer director Radu Jude presents words like “Justice” or “Peace” or something like that and shows the hypocrisy of the world as a demonstration of what those words mean. It is an exercise in cynicism on the level of Jonathan Swift or Kurt Vonnegut. These two parts are disposable. The third part is indispensable.
The third part is the parent-teacher conference. It takes place in a courtyard with all participants wearing face masks and in folding chairs six feet distanced between each other. They all watch the porn video (because not everyone has seen it yet and they need to know what they are discussing) before the enter into the discussion as to whether Emi should be fired. The arguments for and against are both familiar and ridiculous, go on dumb tangents via clueless participants like all public assemblies do, and is equal parts infuriating and hilarious. One can write a thesis on what all these points of view are really about. Given that Emi was having sex with her husband and did not distribute the video herself, it is hard to say what moral boundary she crossed. The argument that makes the most sense against Emi is that the school is supposed to be prestigious and the video is humiliating, so to keep Emi at the school is to share in the humiliation. That is, the parents want their kids to rise in society and don’t want Emi unduly harming that rise. In her defense, Emi has much to say about education and whether she is a competent educator, but whether she is a good teacher seems to be besides the point to these parents. Their kids are here at this expensive school to make connections and get ahead, not to learn things. Katia Pascariu is particularly good at evoking a sense of her soul deadening as she is forced to listen to this bullshit, not the easiest thing to do in a pandemic when half of your face is masked and there is nothing you can use but your eyes. Life may be shit in Romania, but hey, at least the arts are flourishing.
