Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn: Review

Loony Porn or the importance of staying open to the possibility of a delicious surprise

I don’t like arthouse. If there’s someone who’s reading all of my reviews (I doubt it) they would get really, really, really annoyed right now as I think I’m overusing that expression by now. It’s like..

Someone: Hey Lus, wanna get lunch?
Me: I don’t like arthouse

pretty annoying

But I just so, so hate it that I feel the need to tell it when writing a review. Any review. Almost always. I think art cinema is pretentious, almost never has real value or any noteworthy idea, it always thinks too highly of itself and just looks down to every other film. Art cinema has a tendency to rely on the director too much. Their name, their persona. And pays little to nothing attention to crafting a smart script. The only exception is Dogville.

I wasn’t supposed to see this film. We had a game night planned today and one of us, suddenly bailed on us as they were invited to see this film by their gf and a friend. I made fun of them in the group chat for going to see this. I was insensitive obviously. But by some weird flow of events and circumstances I ended up at the screening with this friend who was bailed by their gf and the friend.

I’ve got to say this. If you survive the first couple of minutes, it’s a great ride. It’s about contrast. A pretty graphic and intense scene of sex followed by a very boring montage of running errands. And then a whole section devoted to telling you about different contradictions in life. It was fun. I’ve got to admit this. It wasn’t all bad. I let my guard down when the movie presented us with a sequence where it just showed us different screens and short stories about the bizarre world we live in. Why did I let my guard down at exactly that moment? Hell, because it was like..

“Ok, Lus, listen up. I am an arthouse. I don’t even pretend to be smth else. Yeah. This is me. In its quintessential form. I am very self-aware. I’m just a European art film. And here’s a montage of short stories thrown at you mid-film that have nothing in common, except they had everything in common.”

I respect that. The self-awareness. It had a bit of Dogville-esque finale but not enough. I think this film could’ve been magnificent. It could’ve been so much better than it is. If it had more of an ending like 12 Angry Men combined with Dogville, I would’ve been in awe and in total surrender.

Even though, as far as art cinema goes, I think it was pretty decent. I give up.