Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ on Hulu, Romanian Director Radu Jude’s Profane, Spittle-flinging Rant in the Face of Moral Hypocrisy

Romanian director Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is available in two versions: one that censors its hardcore porn scenes, and one that keeps them intact. Hulu is streaming the censored version, which I watched for the purpose of this review, and slaps intentionally cheapo cards – reading things like “SELF CENSORED VERSION FOLKS!!” and “Blow job!” in comic sans – overtop the potentially offensive imagery. Which is a curious choice that ultimately adds another layer of ironic commentary to this story of a schoolteacher who finds herself under intense scrutiny after her sex tape ends up on the internet for all to see.

BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Emi (Katia Pascariu) and her husband are in the throes of foreplay, and he admits to being aroused by the fact that the camera is recording. They proceed to do all manner of things behind the aforementioned goofy graphics, although we can still hear it and can pretty much discern what’s happening, including the heavy breathing, dirty talk, some ins and outs and hey-theres, and a bit where a clueless and possibly deaf individual knocks on their door to ask about picking up a prescription.

Cut to: some time thereafter. Emi walks the streets of Bucharest. She picks up some flowers and a toy for her daughter, stops to chat with some people, gets a cup of coffee, asks the pharmacist for one Xanax to alleviate her stress. She walks into the frame and then out of it, and the camera observes the traffic and pedestrians, looks up at a billboard, stares at a Barbie doll on a store shelf, admires some lovely architecture, gawks at a dilapidated building.

These scenes go on for quite some time, the everyday bustle of a large European city, as Emi fields a phone call, during which she argues about who uploaded the video and wasn’t it taken down but now it’s back up and what about PornHub? A random woman on the street peers into the camera and mutters a crude epithet. A man parks an immense SUV smack in the middle of the crosswalk. Emi goes into a bookstore and the clerk laughs at her, possibly because he recognizes her from the video, or maybe he just remembered something funny, who knows. And just so you know the story is set in the middle of the Covid pandemic, most everyone wears a facemask.

The second part of the film is a slideshow snidely touching on various components of Romanian history and culture, its atrocities and taboos. In retrospect, the most relevant bit of voiceover narration from this section proclaims children to be “political prisoners of their parents.” This is the kind of stuff Emi probably covers while teaching middle-school history – that bit of full-frontal nudity excepted – which she might not be doing for much longer, because she soon arrives at the third part of the film, when she sits down in front of a group of socially distanced parents in a courtyard and faces a farce of quasi-tribunal made slightly more disturbing because the archetypes she verbally battles are about 80, maybe 85 percent accurate representations of the pretzelbrained thinking of chunks of the populace. I mean, a lot of this has to do with the way things are in Romania, but a lot of it is globally applicable. Such is the state of the world.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: You don’t see unsimulated sex outside the pornosphere too often – so you’ve got Lars von Trier (Antichrist, Nymphomaniac), John Waters (Pink Flamingos), John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus) and a handful of others who feel like, at the very least, superficial references here. Otherwise, Bad Luck Banging is a shaggy dog of a movie that’s very much its own thing.

Performance Worth Watching: Pascariu’s portrayal of a reasonable, flawed human being trying to hold it together under trying circumstances is funny, empathetic, and deserving of praise.

Memorable Dialogue: One of the censorship cards makes one of the film’s main points: “You can show a killing but not a blow job!”

Sex and Skin: This censored version still features full frontal and the sloppy sounds of lovemaking in a variety of iterations. (FYI, the uncensored version is reportedly available on iTunes.)

Our Take: Not sure I can explain the meandering qualities of Bad Luck Banging’s first act, other than to occasionally capture a general street-level tension, likely a side effect of the pandemic. The second act, sarcastic in its parade of historical observations, puts Emi’s sex tape into context by cycling through the destructiveness of politics, religion and war, and questioning why depictions of sexual acts between consensual adults raises such ire. The logic eludes me, too. Human life is tragedy, human life is comedy.

The third act helps bring Jude’s intentions into tighter focus by depicting Emi’s persecution by concerned parents as broad satire. Her crowd of critics includes priests, prudes and perverts, many wearing goofy facemasks, insisting they all watch the sex video again so they can be fully informed before they decide whether Emi should keep her job. Conservatives and liberals are lampooned. There’s lots of petty namecalling. They debate the state of modern education and morality. Emi quotes the national poet, Eminescu, in her defense. Homophobic, sexist and antisemitic slurs are slung willy-nilly – notably not by Emi. Offscreen, cell phones continually blare ridiculous ringtones and miscellaneous commentators toss in snide quips.

What does this all mean? That humanity is hopeless, stupid, utterly lost? Jude is a provocateur who, and I’m speculating here, seems inspired to be a reactionary by the request to self-censor this film. Fine, he seems to say, it just drives home the point harder and deeper, I said, choosing my words poorly. He, and therefore the film, is self-aware, embracing the hypocrisy that others choose to ignore or deny in themselves. Bad Luck Banging is a profane, occasionally unhinged rant of a movie, bold and bonkers, frustrating and fascinating in equal measure.

Our Call: One thing is certain: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is batshit provocative. STREAM IT for that reason alone.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.