Radu Jude’s new film Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World at the Locarno Film Festival. Review

Radu Jude’s film “Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World” was shown at the Locarno Festival. Much was expected from this regular black comedy by the Romanian director, but what he saw even exceeded expectations. Andrey Plakhov.

Radu Jude, one of the most significant directors in Europe, made one of his best films, quoting an aphorism from Stanislav Jerzy Lec in its title. The author of the picture mobilizes the entire personal arsenal of proprietary means and principles – merciless sarcasm, contempt for the norms of political correctness and a riot of cinematography. The directing is based on intelligent post-Godar editing combined with bravura punk aesthetics, the dramaturgy includes sophisticated cinephile games, and the virtuoso camera, the explosive temperament of the actors and the soundtrack from energetic Romanian folk rock create an audiovisual fusion of the highest standard.

Angela (the phenomenal Ilinka Manolache) works for a dubious Austrian public relations company that exploits Romanian personnel and, it seems, Romanian forests in a neo-colonial style. A young woman waking up at five in the morning (an unopened volume of Proust on her bedside table, and among the authors she reveres are Dostoevsky and Muriel Spark), pulls on an awkward shiny dress and rushes at full speed through the backyards of Bucharest to record an interview for a promotional video. Her whole day spent on the nerves behind the wheel, with chewing gum in her mouth, in altercations with sexist drivers, in negotiations with potential heroes of the video, with a visit to the cemetery and for quick sex with her lover, passes in front of the camera and, accordingly, in front of the viewer. The cacophony of hysterical road sounds and phone calls, which the heroine tries to drown out with the forced volume of the radio, drives her to rabid and makes everyone and everything curse. Among other exploits of the day, Angela manages to meet with the infamous German Uwe Boll, who claims to be the “worst director of all times and peoples”, who challenged his critics to a boxing match and knocked them all out. This main part of the film is shot in zoom-like grainy monochrome with bright flashes of light and strange iridescent shades.

In parallel, two more narratives are developing – already in color. First, the same Angela takes her soul away in her TikTok stream in the form of a disgusting misogynistic prankster: a video filter puts bushy eyebrows, a mustache and a goatee on her face, leaving blond female hair flickering in the field of the frame. In this way, she parodies the British Internet freak Andrew Tate, who has collected billions of online views, banned from social networks for homophobic and far-right statements, and also subjected to criminal prosecution in Romania, where he has lived since 2017.

The second color parallel row is edited from frames of the 1981 film Angela Drives On, about the everyday life and love life of a female taxi driver. Its action is played out in the old district of Bucharest, which, shortly after filming, was destroyed to build the monstrous Ceausescu Palace. Romanian movie star Dorina Lazar, who plays a lady behind the wheel, appears forty years later and in the main plot of the film Jude – in the role of an elderly woman, whose son is chosen to shoot in a commercial for another, today’s Angela. Thus, the connection of times is whimsically tied up and karmically looped. Appears and almost 90-year-old actor Mishke, who played in the old film of the heroine’s husband; his name in the credits is crossed out and corrected to the real – Laszlo. Once a victim of Romanization, now he (more precisely, his character) turns out to be a fan of the national populist Orban, the leader of a neighboring country.

The Hungarian motif is just one of many that Jude grabs right at the cutting edge of relevance and throws into the face of an astonished public with a fearlessness worthy of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, Salman Rushdie and Slavoj Zizek (all of whom are mentioned in the film). Here and discrimination against gypsies, and the ugly state of Romanian roads, dotted along the roadsides with crosses in memory of the dead, and the heroine’s comment about the Albanians (“they are even poorer than us and even bigger morons”). Everyone gets it – including Jean-Luc Godard (role model for Judet), who was “helped to die like some cat.” Even American military assistance to Ukraine becomes an object of grotesque sarcasm, and in the most provocative stream, Angela manages to express skepticism about the “Jew Zelensky” and shout out “Glory to Russia.”

But the main anti-hero of the film is not a network hooligan, but German-Austrian capital, embodied in the image of a cold, soulless and not very smart marketing director. Ironically, Frau Goethe, this shark of capitalism, turns out to be the direct heiress of the great poet, whom, however, she didn’t particularly read, since he is a “member of the family” (this role, symbolizing the degeneration of the aristocracy of the spirit, is played by the magnificent German actress Nina Hoss).

The climax of the film is played during the recording of an interview with one of the disabled workers who suffered at the factory due to the fault of the company (Ovidiu Pirsan). Together with his family, he was chosen to star in a safety ad for a fee of €1,000, designed to remove the blame from the Austrians and put it on the workers themselves, who did not wear helmets and generally maimed themselves.

Such is the pessimistic landscape of the “end of the world”: corporate corruption and censorship find support in an atmosphere of civil infantilism, latent racism, infatuation with “strong leaders” and a wild “free market”. Outside of the film, the inevitable consequences remain: crippled workers will remain without support, crosses will multiply on the highways, and Angela’s ancestors will be dug up from the grave so that the land of the old cemetery will replenish the wealth of another shady construction company.