Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

Plot

Emi Cilibiu, a history teacher at a prominent Romanian secondary school, films a sex tape with her husband Eugen. Eugen uploads the video to a private fetish site, from which it is downloaded and repeatedly posted to public porn sites. The staff at Emi's school, as well as the parents of her students, are scandalized by her behavior, and they call her to a parent-teacher conference in the evening on a day soon after the video is widely circulated. Emi spends the day before the conference running various errands and growing increasingly frustrated at the sexist, nationalist, and consumerist aspects of Romanian society, as well as the additional social stressors imposed by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A montage follows, depicting the director's definitions or thoughts on various related concepts or objects. Some observations are humorous (for social distancing, a clip of a traditional Romanian folk dance modified to comply with distance regulations is shown), some are more bitter (for the French Revolution and the Romanian Revolution, violent scenes from the events are depicted followed by shots of commercial products named after the events), and some are outright caustic (for efficiency, a 24/7 funeral home is shown, open and attracting a long line, directly opposite a hospital, presumably one that houses coronavirus patients). A few of the definitions involve depictions of graphic nudity or unsimulated sex acts.

Emi arrives at the parent-teacher conference, where she is informed by a sympathetic administrator that the parents and teachers will be voting on whether or not the school should continue to employ her in light of her supposed "moral transgression;" if a majority vote against her, she will be expected to resign. The parents, among them a retired Romanian Army lieutenant, a jet pilot with fascist political leanings, a socially conservative priest, a "nice guy" who defends Emi in an attempt to ingratiate himself to her, and a woman who has previously offered bribes to Emi in exchange for higher grades, are generally critical of Emi's actions. In condemning Emi's behavior and teaching style, the parents express vulgar and sexist attitudes towards women, Romaphobia, antisemitism, and question historical evidence Emi invokes to contradict their points.

The film concludes by presenting three alternate endings in sequence. In the first, Emi is "acquitted" by the parents and teachers, leading to a physical confrontation between her and another parent. In the second, she is "convicted," and resigns without incident. In the third, she is again "convicted," but transforms into a superhero resembling Wonder Woman. She traps the parents and teachers in a net, and forces those who had most harshly opposed her during the conference to fellate a dildo.

Cast

The cast include:

Katia Pascariu as Emi

Claudia Ieremia as The Principal

Olimpia Mălai as Mrs. Lucia

Nicodim Ungureanu as Mr. Gheorghescu

Alexandru Potocean

Andi Vasluianu as Mr. Otopeanu

Ion Dichiseanu as himself

Release

On 11 February 2021, Berlinale announced that the film would have its worldwide premiere at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival in the Berlinale Competition section, in March 2021.

Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 93 critics and, categorizing the reviews as positive or negative, assessed 84 as positive and 9 as negative for a 90% rating. Among the reviews, it determined an average rating of 7.30 out of 10. The critics consensus reads "As playfully provocative as its title, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn uses a potentially prurient premise to highlight the hypocrisy of societal norms". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".