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What will possibly remain in the public memory of the 71st Berlin Film Festival is the opinion that a pornographic film has won.
That would of course be completely wrong.
But three years ago, let's say “intellectual porn” won and the title of the winning film naturally proves the wrong assumption: “Bad luck or: crazy porn”, the literal translation from Romanian (in English: “ Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn ").
And much more than the title, a large part of the public will not notice for the time being, at least until Radu Jude's film is shown at the Berlinale for the public in June, where the entire program is to be shown in cinemas.
Only the first five minutes of "Pechbumsen" have porn quality.
You can see masked nudes doing various practices (including a bit of a whip), and they take on themselves with their cell phones, naturally assuming that the videos would remain private.
Of course they end up on the Internet, and that's bad luck for one participant, because Emi is a high school teacher.
In no time at all, she is recognized first by her students and then by their parents (in that order).
Disaster brews in the first half of Jude's film.
We follow Emi on shopping trips through Bucharest, there are masked people everywhere - this is the only competition film in which the pandemic occurs - and her cell phone keeps reporting new developments in the crisis.
Finally, a parents' evening is scheduled.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Private erotic video recordings of the school teacher Emi, on which she can be recognized despite the mask, end up on the Internet.
Emi's career is suddenly in jeopardy and she has to deal with appalled parents, priests and other moralists.
Source: microFilm
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The second hour is the real core of the film.
The accusations patter on Emi.
Emi shows no remorse, but defends herself robustly.
First of all, there are the expected arguments: a teacher must be a role model for her students, one must be able to show her respect.
But then the gathering turns out to be more and more a populist shark tank, from which sexist, chauvinist, antigypsy statements slosh into the room.
All of these opinions well up behind masks.
You get the feeling that the masking disinhibits the parents, because behind their mouth protection they are almost as anonymous as in a forum on the Internet.
The pandemic, the mask requirement, they work with Jude like a truth serum that brings to light all the deep-seated instincts and prejudices that are only masked by public pressure of opinion.
Radu Jude then offers us three possible endings, a calming, a disturbing and an anarchic one.
"Bad luck" is not a perfect film, it looks like a needle punch, but it is a highly interesting commentary on the time in the middle of the pandemic about the pandemic.
Maren Eggert with her robot prince Dan Stevens
Source: Christine Fenzl
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There is no actor who has received an award for the best role.
The Berlinale has lifted the gender segregation and now only awards one prize for the best leading and the best supporting role.
Both went to women, to Maren Eggert's antiquarian who, in “Ich bin dein Mensch”, was given a well-advanced, good-looking male robot to “try out” for three weeks, and to the Hungarian novice actress Lilla Kizlinger.
Bence Fliegauf's “Forest - I see you everywhere” (“Rengeteg - mindenhol látlak”) consists of seven miniatures - each of which is a dramatic confrontation between a man and a woman - and in it Kizlinger plays a schoolgirl who blames her father for the death of her mother.
All mini-dramas are about guilty parties and victims and about situations from which there is hardly a way out.
“Forest” is an intense, confrontational film.
The Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi also basically tells three short stories in “Wheel of Happiness and Fantasy” (“Guzen to sozo”), much more moderate but no less intense.
The most impressive one has two middle-aged women meet by chance at a train station and each recognize an old classmate in the other.
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The two will find out that nothing is true, what they think they know, that their memories, their desires, their lives have played tricks on them.
And this director - a man - manages to stage female feelings in a way that has hardly been seen before, not even from female directors;
the second most important Berlinale prize, the Grand Jury Prize, was the reward.
Fusako Urabe and Aoba Kawai in "Wheel of Luck and Imagination"
Source: Neopa Fictive
The German competition films, even if they received little of the award blessing, were among the most respectable appearances in the competition.
In addition to Maren Eggert in Maria Schrader's gentle future scenario “Ich bin dein Mensch”, Maria Speth's documentary “Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse” received a prize from the jury for his close observation of an extremely mixed class and its teacher, who heroically conveyed all of this to this thirteen-year-old what you will need as citizens of this country.
Dominik Graf's Kästner film adaptation of “Fabian” and Daniel Brühl's “Next Door” came away empty-handed, but both are undisputedly successful, just a little too popular for Berlinale price considerations.
The 71st Berlinale, which ended today without many people noticing, was a memorable event, given its films and its circumstances.
We, the critics, who, along with the film dealers, were among the privileged and were allowed to see the Berlinale films online, will think of darkened living rooms where we streamed three, four, sometimes even five films a day.
We'll remember the spinning wheel if the picture was frozen again (and a few seconds later the sound) and we didn't know whether it was due to the Berlinale server or our own router.
We will remember how we sometimes fast-forwarded ashamedly, how the lights sometimes shed in our makeshift cinema with the children, how we reacted to the buzzing cell phone even though we had resolved not to do just that.
In short, it was a Berlinale that we never want to experience again.
It was a Berlinale, which - for reasons discussed in advance - could not be canceled and could not take place in any other form.
But it was also a Berlinale, which despite all the adverse circumstances, we have the feeling that it could have had one of the best film programs in recent years.
You have to be careful about this, because judging films on the home screen is highly problematic;
The jurors were quite rightly invited to see everything in a Berlin cinema.
We look forward to the true discovery of these films in theaters this summer.
Hopefully.
Scene from "Natural Light"
Source: Tamás Dobos
The competition prizes:
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Golden bear for the best film:
Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc
(
bad luck or: crazy porn
)
by Radu Jude
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize:
Guzen to sozo
(
Wheel of Luck and Imagination
)
by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Silver Bear Jury Prize:
Mr. Bachmann and his class
from Maria Speth
Silver Bear for Best Director:
Dénes Nagy for
Természetes fény (Natural Light)
Silver Bear for Best Acting Performance in a Leading Role:
Maren Eggert in
Ich bin dein Mensch
by Maria Schrader
Silver Bear for Best Acting Performance in a Supporting Role:
Lilla Kizlinger in
Rengeteg - mindenhol látlak
(
Forest - I see you everywhere
) by Bence Fliegauf
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay:
Hong Sangsoo for
Inteurodeoksyeon
(
Introduction
)
by Hong Sangsoo
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement:
Yibrán Asuad for the montage of
Una película de policías
(
A Cop Film
)
by Alonso Ruizpalacios
More about the Berlinale