Dracula, Sucking the Blood of the Proletariat

Dracula (2025) - Jude The prolific Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude presents Dracula, a biting satire about the literary figure forever immortalized by Bram Stoker, and Romania's very own, well, Transylvania’s to be exact, Vlad the Impaler, which Stoker based his character on. After seeing Jude's riotous previous films, notably, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, I was expecting general mayhem and chaos, and I wasn't disappointed. But with its almost three-hour running time, the film somewhat runs out of steam midway through.

Dracula is a monster of a movie. Stitched together with multiple movie-within-a-movie, story-within-a-story structure (it doesn't go unnoticed by its flamboyant narrator/filmmaker Adonis, played by Adonis Tanta). On the onset, Adonis is asking AI to help making the movie. The AI is called Dr. Judex AI 0.0., which generates horrendous AI images at the whims of Adonis.

Dracula is a decidedly and intentionally a bad movie - not only it's aesthetically ugly - shot in low-grade DV with jumpy zoom shots and old-school corny digital wipes, but it also has a lot of dick jokes, felatios and full-frontal nudities. It's as usual, profanity ridden comment on the state of the world we live in.

The main thread of the plot in Adonis film starts out with a Dracula themed Romanian theater restaurant geared toward tourists, who are there for authentic Transylvanian experience. These suckers are there to spend more than one thousand euros to sleep with the Count, played by Uncle Sandu, an old, former mental patient who got swept into the business by the sleazy proprietor. The problem is, because of his age, he can't perform in bed. The night usually ends with Dracula and Vampirella flee, and tourists equipped with wooden stakes perform hide-and-seek session in the streets of Bucharest.

Divided by chapters, often starting with grotesque AI generated images with Adonis's prompts, there are many different takes on the history of Romania and Dracula legend: there's a tender love story harkening back to olden times in communist regime under Ceaușescu, a reincarnation story of the infamous Vlad the Impaler visiting his own castle- now a tourist attraction, a maize farmer who finds the crops he's been growing has turned into dildos (a lovestory from Dr. Judex AI which need an upgrade, with a nominal fee). The most obvious satire is Dracula as an exploitative tech company boss: as workers complain the long hours and low wages, he brings in his undead goons and sucks the blood out of his workers.

As always the case in Jude film, no current event or persons of interests go unnoticed. Musk and Trump are mentioned many times, so is the war in Ukraine. In criticizing AI, Jude uses great number of AI generated images to fill the gap of his AI prompted stories to horrific effects.

Adonis's original story of actors who play Dracula and Mina/Vampirella from theater restaurant, devolves into a violent witch hunt, where blood thirsty tourists are after them, actively trying to put stakes through their hearts with the proprietor's blessing.

Dracula, probably the most well-known Romanian export, being exploited by the citizens in a rampant capitalist society, is on full display in Jude's satire. But it is the film's relentless assault on the senses and good manners that is its ultimate downfall. As the animated dildos penetrate actors from behind for the umpteenth time, I wished the film, which had made its point from the get-go, had ended an hour ago.

Go with the Flow

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) - Jude As with his previous film, Bad luck Banging, Radu Jude's new film Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is unsparing, uproarious satire that implicates everyone in this needlessly complex society we live in. And it's loads of fun. It's a frenetic, 'moving' picture as we take the passenger seat in a van driven by Angela, a hard-working production assistant of a PR firm, Forbidden Planet, hired by Austrian furniture company. Angela's Tik Tok filtered alter-ego is known as Bobita, a bold headed, thick unibrow and bearded dudebro who spews the vilest, sexist, racist rant with six thousand followers. She spends most of her time in her car driving because her job requires driving and interviewing potential workplace accident victims, one after another, who could be featured in the company's safety promotional video. And every chance she gets, she becomes Bobita anywhere.

Angela's hectic daily routine is intercut with an early 80s Romanian melodrama called Angela Moves On, about a wholesome female taxi driver and her life, as she drives from place to place in Bucharest. The film juxtaposes the changes in the streets and neighborhoods from Ceaușescu era. Many anecdotes, and musings of all the characters concern the reality today's Romania and of the world.

Jude's playfulness is infectious. The actress who plays Angela the cab driver makes an appearance as the character in the film. She plays a mother of a man on a wheelchair who was chosen to be in the promotional video. The man plays himself who was a victim of the workplace accident that is obviously the fault of the company for its negligence.

German Actress Nina Hoss plays the Austrian boss Doris Goethe (yes that Goethe), whose furniture company is leveling Romanian forests, Uwe Boll, the German b-movie director also makes an appearance as himself, directing a monster CGI movie in the green screen backdrop.

However hilarious, the film is not all laughs. In the middle of its 2 hrs. 30 min. running time, he devotes a good 4 minutes to feature a silent segment composed of hundreds of crosses that are strewn about along the highway which Angela describes as the 250-kilometer highway with 600 crosses, while giving Doris Goethe a ride to the hotel. Puzzled Doris asks what it means. It's a one-way road that has a very narrow emergency lane, but no one follows that. They use it as if it's two-way roads. "That's very stupid." Doris responds. "We are!" Angela responds. Nothing works the way it's supposed to. Corruption is everywhere. In the EU, Romania is the poorest country, she says. Maybe except for Albania. They are primitives, Angela utters.

Biting and thought provoking, Do Not Expect Too Much is a perfect survey of the state of our lives right now. Jude, along with Assayas and Bonello, is a master chronicler of ever changing, ever so complicated world we can't make sense of anymore. It's fun, it's tragic. All we can do is go along with the flow, like Taoists saying.

Synecdoche, Bucharest

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) - Jude Radu Jude's satire of modern Romania, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is both uproariously funny and biting in its criticism of the former Soviet Block country's checkered history. It starts with an explicit sex scene with a school history teacher, Emi (Patia Pascaríu) and her husband engaging in what appears to be a homemade sextape. Then somehow the whole thing ends up online for everyone to see.

After that, the whole movie is Emi walking around ugly, capitalist modern city of Bucharest, all stressed out for the consequences she has to face. Everything is hilarious, from Pascaíu's performance to Jude's aimless camera, often sidetracked by inanimate objects he pans to - a broken mannequin, a flower growing from the concrete floor, the McDonald sign, the political party posters, etc.

The middle part, titled as 'Collages', playfully goes through all the hypocracies in Romanian political history, vacuous modern culture and sexist stereotypes.

As Emi sits at the table in an impromptu PTA meeting outdoors (because of Covid), she tries to defend her actions as a private matter that somehow got out of hands and into kids' phones. As the meeting continues, the old conspiratorial, ignorant and racist tendencies from the parents reappear to the surface.

I mean, considering what's going on in Florida, what's happening in Bad Luck Banging is very much universal and on point. Jude's Ci(shit)ty Symphony movie of consumerist Bucharest and in-your-face satire exposing the society’s hypocrisy is, along with Triangle of Sadness and Barbie, one of the best comedies I’ve seen in years. Best Wonder Woman movie too where WW assaults everyone in the room with a dildo!