Beneath all the formal sophistication and dark humor, there is a roiling anger that defines Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.
You sense it most in the brazen lead performance by Ilinca Manolache. She plays Angela, a gofer working for a production company in contemporary Bucharest. We follow her through her various tasks while assisting on a workplace-safety video—navigating congested traffic, recording auditions, sitting through meetings, making airport runs—all of which she endures with what can only be called a zen aggression. (She’s as liable to ignore the sexist men hurling insults at her on the road as viciously berate them.) To let off steam, Angela livestreams little videos in which she uses a face-swapping filter to look like a bald, vulgar bro named Bobita, who delivers misogynistic rants about his sexual conquests and material possessions with equal ardor. Manolache is a powder keg—you want to turn away from Angela, except that you fear that might make you vulnerable to her next outburst.
My sense, from an American perspective, is that Angela stands in for an Eastern European generation who feels like they’ve been hustled by the failed promises of capitalism. And so they trudge through their overworked, underpaid days with a combination of resentment and exhaustion. To provide a larger historical context, writer-director Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn) intersperses Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World with occasional scenes from Angela Moves On, a Romanian film from 1981—made during the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu—about a middle-aged woman who takes a job as a taxi driver. The gambit is elegantly handled, as Jude and editor Catalin Cristutiu carefully mirror scenes from the two movies. Then there are meta-metaphysical touches like the moment in which Angela meets an older woman named Angela who says she used to be a taxi driver. (Yes, she’s played by Dorina Lazar, star of Angela Moves On.)
I don’t think Jude is suggesting Romania once enjoyed rosier times; the footage from Angela Moves On is frequently manipulated—slowed down to eerie effect, often allowing us to focus on men in the background who are glaring at Angela or the camera. At the same time, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is blisteringly critical of modern Romania, where everything seems to be up for sale, to the benefit of a very few at the top of the economic ladder. At one point during her day, Angela and her mother visit the grave of a family member. As giant advertising billboards loom over them, they discuss what to do now that a developer has purchased the cemetery and all the bodies will need to be exhumed.
That’s dark—and “leavened” by the bitter punchline of a phone call Angela gets from a telemarketer trying to sell her insurance. This is how Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World works: it has the formal invention of French legend Agnes Varda (Vagabond), the politicized playfulness of Czech pioneer Vera Chytilova (Daisies), and the searing satirism of Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster). It’s a bitter pill chased by the world’s smallest spoon of sugar.
(7/3/2024)
