A production assistant drives around Bucharest to audition injured, former employees for a safety at work video.
The take
With a title like this, it was expected that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World would be critical of today’s current circumstances, but the film takes a more startling approach. Radu Jude’s longest narrative feature is a day in the life of a disgruntled, underpaid production assistant, and as she drives between interviewees injured from work accidents, the film alternates between the black-and-white, terribly mundane reality, her Tiktok-filtered satirical rants as Bobiță, and an old colored film of a Romania decades past. It's a cynical depiction of how vulgar it is to be alive today, but it’s also more honest as Jude refuses to cling to the past.
What stands out
We’ve seen films alternating between black and white and color, but in this case, today’s reality being black and white contrasted to the colored film of yesteryear really hits home how much society’s regressed.
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