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Set design from "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn", the Berlinale winner by Radu Jude
Photo: Ghetie Silviu / Silviu Ghetie / Micro Film / Berlinale
The Romanian winning film of this year's Berlinale begins with a jump into the bed of teacher Emi.
At first we don't know that she is a teacher.
We only see a young woman and her partner.
And then how the two of them enjoy each other with masturbation, blowjob and finally penetration from behind.
But the film is called "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" (something like "Bad luck when you fuck or crazy porn"), and so the fun quickly turns into stress, at least for Emi (Katia Pascariu): the video recording of her number ends up on an "adult" page on the Internet, where they can find their students and immediately tell their parents about it.
That is the bad luck with banging, the crazy porn is what follows: a tribunal of the parents, in which drive removal is carried out in the form of hate tirades.
Because between pandemic, neo-fascism and corruption, nothing seems to counteract the perceived collective loss of control better than being able to act as a judge over women and their sexuality and decide whether Emi is allowed to continue teaching.
Even "Wonder Woman" appears
Berlinale winners have repeatedly praised the fact that they decorate the most political of all major film festivals with their relevance and urgency.
"Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" confirms and breaks this rule, it captures the zeitgeist and turns against it, does not want to please and is nevertheless the greatest fun that has won a Golden Bear in ages.
Because despite all the intellectual rigidity that director Radu Jude proves here, his film shoots completely freely in the best moments.
In the end, even "Wonder Woman" has the best appearance of the year, if not of her entire film career.
For Radu Jude, this culminates a long history at the Berlinale.
With his debut film »Aferim!«, A black-and-white western set in Romania in the 19th century, the Romanian was invited to the competition in 2015 and was awarded the prize for best director.
And even then it became clear how much he whistled about the neorealism with which the new Romanian cinema had achieved awards and world fame in recent years.
Instead, he let one surprising film follow the next, had a summer holocaust commemorative comedy follow a gloomy portrait of an artist - and followed up with highly complex essay films such as the most recent »Tipografic majuscul«, which was shown in the Berlinale Forum section in 2020.
The fact that he has now won the Golden Bear is hardly surprising.
From its premiere in the online offer, to which the Berlinale has been reduced to for the time being due to the pandemic, Jude was one of the favorites for the main prize.
Only the German-Georgian Alexandre Koberidze and the French Céline Sciamma (see festival highlights) seemed to be real competition for him.
The fact that the two went completely empty now puts the accuracy that the jury has proven with its Golden Bear into perspective.
Once again, veteran Hong Sang-Soo has received an award - this time for the best screenplay, based on best director and best leading actress.
The new talents that the prizes can draw attention to will be limited to the Hungarian Dénes Nagy in 2021, whose “Natural Light” was an extremely sovereign Second World War drama about a Hungarian soldier on duty in the Soviet Union.
Perhaps the jury, which this time only consisted of previous bear winners like Ildikó Enyedi and Gianfranco Rosi, was too busy distributing the acting prizes wisely.
The fact that these will be advertised in a gender-neutral manner from 2021 had caused some discussions in advance as to whether this would reduce the representation of women.
But as was to be expected, the jury decided to defuse the discourse bomb for two actresses: the German Maren Eggert from "Ich bin dein Mensch" for the best leading role and the Hungarian Lilla Kizlinger from "Rengeteg - Mindenhol látlak" for the best supporting role, both clever, sensitive services that deserve the price spotlight.
The highest award for German cinema, which was well represented with four films in a contingent reduced to 15, was the jury award for "Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse", Maria Speth's wonderful long-term observation of a teacher who apparently can't help but to put your students on the right track.
He owns the three and a half hours of this Berlinale that pass the fastest.
It can be even more exclusive
The fact that Dominik Graf and Daniel Brühl, on the other hand, went away empty-handed can, with a bit of resentment, be understood as a punishment for two films that increased the exclusivity of this online Berlinale into the absurd.
Instead of facing the already heavily reduced international press, “Nebenan” and “Fabian” refused to stream and were only shown to selected critics in advance in the cinema - a mistake that can be blamed on both the productions and the festival.
The Berlinale should have negotiated more strictly here and should not have allowed any exceptions.
But how much leeway the festival directors from Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian had this year is questionable anyway.
For a long time she dreamed of an offline Berlinale, first in February, then in April, until Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters finally stepped in and implemented a hybrid format.
In June, the winning films and the selection of the other sections are to be shown in Berlin cinemas.
It is difficult to say what will last as an impression of the festival until then.
Over 100 films, divided into five tranches and only activated for one day, simply did not fit together in individual use to form a festival program that sparked discussions and made artistic positions visible beyond the individual film.
Even shrunk to a quarter of its normal film size, the Berlinale has once again shown itself to be a wild growth in which at most individual curatorial accents could be recognized: The »Encounters« series, which has existed since 2020, continued to distinguish itself as a section in which perfected film languages such as the of the Zurich brothers find space next to an amateur experiment like “The Scary of Sixty-First” by Dasha Nekrasova and stand for a cinema of disparities.
The remaining qualities must then be shown by the Summer Special, hopefully with a large audience, but in any case with a worthy Golden Bear.
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