Trieste Film Festival 2024: Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World | Review
Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, which opened the 35th Trieste Film Festival, is a satirical rebellion against capitalist oppression and the quest for survival.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, by Radu Jude, premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2023 where it won the Special Jury Prize. Romania’s latest Oscar entry served as opening film at Trieste Film Festival 2024, of which Film Fest Report is a proud media partner, where the audience enthusiastically received the satire in which workers try to find ways to survive within the demoralizing capitalist system.
There is poetry, if not some battle cry, in opening a film festival with a story about an overworked and overstretched filmmaker struggling to avoid touching the poverty line. Radu Jude chooses Ilinca Manolache to play Angela, a livewire workhorse in his latest feature Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii, 2023) and interlaces her fast-paced survival struggles in modern-day capitalism with meditative excerpts from a bygone communist era.
Present day Angela is a talent scout and professional filmmaker. Her world is literally devoid of colour as her alarm clock wakes her up before 6 a.m. in stifling black and white. As she rises naked from her bed to face another day, she puts on a sequined dress that contrasts the aggressive physicality that Manaloche imbues the character with. We are soon to find out that her world is full of contrasts that she is struggling to find her place and her peace in.
Although Angela rages through the streets partly frustrated with the traffic and in part not to fall asleep behind the wheel from overexhaustion, once she reaches her interviewees for screen test footage, she is polite, professional and empathetic. Regardless of her punk-skank appearance, she easily builds rapport and manages to extract a painful recollection about a work injury from workers similarly exploited as she is by the company they both work for.
Back in her car, the animalistic beats of music that plays to keep her awake also serves to alleviate the pang of guilt at muddying the facts about the true intentions of her film. Although the injured workers will be compensated for their participation, the video will actually serve to wash the company’s hands of any responsibility and instead place it back on the workers. She also vents through creating vulgar TikToks through her alternate-persona Bobita – a bald caricature of misogynist misconception and far-right politics.
All this is periodically interlaced with colour clips from a 1981 feature Angela Moves On (Angela merge mai departe) in which another Angela is a taxi driver who finds love. Both Angelas take on traditionally male professions and strive to succeed in them, although the irony here shows the communism era as a more relaxed and possibly even a more desirable setting.
In a complete disintegration into satire of hopelessness, Jude finishes Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World with a 40 minute sketch in which a documentary film crew literally strips the scenery behind their work-injured protagonists whenever they mention anything that their common employer might be found liable for. Angela, of course, provides us with her spicy commentary by filming herself as Bobita in between takes.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is Radu Jude’s rebel yell against injustice. Although he brings two Angel(a)s into conflict with oppressive systems he becomes increasingly disheartened with the state of the world. Not the Angelas though. They’re determined to survive. Against all odds.
Film Fest Report was a proud media partner of the 35th Trieste Film Festival.
