Expect a lot from the end of this film
DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Radu Jude, Romania, 2023, 8)
So apparently Jude appeals to me in the same way Godard does to those people who don’t think him an empty-headed, bloviating wanker — as the maker of heady, eclectic free-wheeling essays (though Jude makes other types of films, too).
For almost an hour at the start I was kinda mystified about EXPECT’s three very different threads — 16 mm black-and-white following the harried day of film production assistant Angela’s work on a multinational firm’s industrial-safety film; TikTok videos by a wannabe Andrew Tate in all their stupidity and vulgarity; and scenes from an early-80s Romanian movie ANGELA MOVES ON about a cab driver.
Jude’s film started to come together once we see how the three were connected and it kept getting better and funnier and darker, albeit always in a scattershot vein that keeps this film from ranking with Jude’s absolute best — this being a strictly relative statement though. This film has Nina Hoss playing an Austrian boss in an intellectually fascinating conversation with Angela (Ilinca Manolache) on the drive from Bucharest airport. It also has Angela converse with Uwe Boll playing himself, as perhaps the most appealing person in the movie (really). There’s even the small details … I cracked up at that lead image. In other words, a lot of stuff has been thrown at the wall. It mostly sticks.
I guess I just think that Jude is more socially sophisticated than Godard, that his narrative sense is more disciplined and that his formal provocations make more sense to me. I can’t exclude the possibility that the first and the last, though, are a function of Jude being closer to my age (or the same thing, my seeing his films in their present context).
The last shot is an amazing tour de force. Jude abandons the formal styles he had been using, instead looking like contemporary footage, as if in a synthesis. But it lasts more than a half-hour at degree zero, without a cut or a camera move as people shoot the corporate-safety film that Angela had been building towards. The first Jude film I ever saw was THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, which built toward the shooting of auto commercial. This shoot goes about as well.
Rightwing Film Geek 
How do you reconcile the non-simulated sex scenes at the beginning of Jude’s previous film with your overall worldview? In your mind, does the film represent an instance where a work possesses artistic merit but is morally indefensible? (Just to be clear, I’m not implying that you need to be a Christian or a conservative in order to dislike non-simulated sex scenes.)
Your blog is excellent, by the way. I’ve been reading it for many years now.
Comment by Philip | December 15, 2023 |
I’d rather he hadn’t done it, and the length of it is an artistic mistake.
But it didn’t ruin the movie for me, because (and this might be a personal tic) I have almost never been turned on by sex scenes, simulated or otherwise, in legitimate movies. It’s as if my mind autodeploys a deflector shield like on Star Trek, and then I can’t really hold it against the rest of the movie.
Comment by vjmorton | December 15, 2023 |
I was referring more to the ethics of having actors engage in those sorts of acts on camera. By contrast (and by all accounts), the sex scenes in “Blue Is the Warmest Color” were entirely simulated, as the actresses wore prostheses during those sequences. No clue if there was any sort of, uh, “invisible barrier” during the opening of “Bad Luck Banging.” I haven’t seen the movie since it came out, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. Certainly seems like the most sanitary option!
I recently revisited Armond White’s (positive) review of “Bad Luck Banging,” and I’m kind of amused by his decision to completely ignore that sequence. In fact, he writes that the film possesses “the first truly shocking movie image” of 2021: “a person wearing a blue paper face mask.” Funny stuff.
Comment by Philip | December 15, 2023
Oh it was unsimulated.
As I said, I wished Jude hadn’t done it but those sins are now accomplished facts, unaffected by my decision to watch this film or not. And I don’t think I was myself consuming it as pornography, so no sin there either. It’s possible that my patronage might “encourage” more pornography production but in this case I doubt it simply because I don’t think Jude is a pornographer.
FWIW, when I noted that I was going to see it “next week” on Twitter, a friend who might politely be called not a religious man, said “did you know about this” and advised that I could time my arrival in the theater for about five minutes into the movie without losing anything since I would now “know” what I would need to know for following the movie — that the lead female character had made a porn tape.
Comment by vjmorton | December 18, 2023