Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

Sort of a shotgun approach to commentary (the movie uses its framing device to go after seemingly every issue in modern Romanian society) which often makes for some bold sequences even while it's a little overstuffed.

An odd movie! I liked the "showdown" between the teacher and the parents; the dialogue and the tension show us a glimpse of a reality in which something like this happened. The other parts went a little too far: the porn video too long, the entire romanian montage was too much and felt like an effort from the director to score some important awards and nomination. I was surprised by the final product considering it's the same guy who brought us a masterpiece (Aferim!)

This rating might change. On Letterboxd I didn't give it a rating because a small part of the film I skipped (the beginning and a part of the "dictionary").

Mixed feelings. Great insights, made me curious about Romenian history, but the third part was a little bit of a mess.

I guess I've been spoiled by the fast pace of American movies. The first half of this movie was agonizingly slow. For example it spends an inordinate amount of time watching the main character walk down the street. By the standards of American movies just about nothing happens in the first half. I started skipping ahead. At length we see the meeting of the parents, the headmistress, and the teacher whose sex tape (with her husband) was uploaded to the web and then seen by her students. That whole scene is essentially a well done, entertaining lecture in the form of questions and criticism from hypocritical parents and very articulate, knowledgeable answers from the teacher. Don't bother to watch this in hopes of seeing the sex tape. In the American version, at least, you hear the audio, which is pretty hot, but the entire screen is covered by a colorful graphic with statements about censorship and sex, sometimes humorous.

10 minutes of hard-core porn followed by watching-paint-dry cinema verite nonsense. I gave up after about 25 minutes. Terrible.

An intriguing Romanian film analyzing social hypocrisy in a unique and thought provoking way. Radu Jude has a lot to say and boy does he ever make a statement. He's able to highlight the absurd in such a precise way. A woman who downloaded porn because she knew it would be taken down so she could show it to others because it's so revolting, is so right where we are as a society. It's raunchy at times and slow in others but never dull. A satire that explores humanity, Jude is not only perceptive, but allows the viewer to observe just how ridiculous a culture we are in! The loudest voices win, no matter how wrong they are. Final Score: 7/10

Sort of a shotgun approach to commentary (the movie uses its framing device to go after seemingly every issue in modern Romanian society) which often makes for some bold sequences even while it's a little overstuffed.

the sex scene at the beginning was entirely too long. the joke was clear within a few seconds, but it just kept going for over 3 minutes, just showing us a censored screen and some subtitles. after this, the film progresses to a lot of entirely meaningless footage of romanian shop fronts, murals, alleyways, neighborhoods and apartment buildings. it's not exactly bad, but most of it appears to genuinely just be candid footage of people walking by, or just graffiti the camera crew found in the city, and as such most of that footage would be better placed in some kind of documentary or a walking livestream or something. by 30 minutes into the film, it's still basically the same, although the protagonist is beginning to find out that her tape has been leaked. it really feels like this movie should tell us first and foremost that it's essentially a long series of stock footage of romanian daily events, with just a few shots actually planned and directed. i'm not sure why it presents itself as a comedy either, as while it is a tiny bit funny here and there, it seems to be more geared towards advertising for tourism in romania or espousing romanian historical events than anything else. i can't say that it's entirely a bad film, it's just not at all what the description presents it as, and deeply lacks structure in lieu of being some kind of love letter to romania on the director's part. i do not know where the whole sex tape gimmick even fits into this, and it feels glued onto the rest of the footage. i can understand if this is meant to be a feminist piece and one which helps the outside world understand what it's like to be a woman in romania, but in general it's marketed as some kind of indie comedy which it absolutely is not. it's at best an art film and at worst a film student's poorly conceived project.

Worse, most boring film I have ever seen