Ilinca Manolache, the star of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, speaks to AnOther about working with the Romanian auteur. “It’s important that artists make the public question things,” she says
You should, in fact, expect a great deal from Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. A jagged jigsaw constructed by the Romanian auteur Radu Jude, the raucous, politically biting comedy aims its satire at sexist vloggers, sadistic corporations, and the unfairness of the gig economy, while delivering its shape-shifting storytelling via TikTok clips, grainy black-and-white cinematography, and found footage from the 1981 Romanian obscurity Angela Keeps Going. It is, then, in keeping with a filmmaker whose 2021 feature Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn starts with an explicit sex tape and concludes with a Curb Your Enthusiasm-style sketch via a Godardian PowerPoint.
Similarly, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World fashions humour and shock value from its juxtaposition of high-brow and low-brow. The film’s foul-mouthed protagonist, Angela, is an exhausted production assistant imbued with vicious energy by Ilinca Manolache, a Romanian actor shot in monochrome for long, unbroken shots. Then, when Angela grabs her phone out of boredom, the frame switches to gaudy, digital colours as the underpaid worker speaks to camera for TikTok. Or, more specifically, it’s as Bobita, a burping, swearing parody of online misogynists, complete with a video filter that transforms Angela’s face into something resembling Andrew Tate, the influencer who was recently placed under house arrest in Romania for human trafficking.
“I started doing Bobita on social media platforms during the pandemic,” Manolache tells me over Zoom, without a video filter, from her home in Bucharest. “He’s a toxic male character that is everywhere in our society. I needed to get it out of my system, and feel empowered by doing it.” However, any facial similarities to online hate figures are a coincidence. “I hadn’t heard of Andrew Tate when I started Bobita. I just used this Snapchat filter called ‘bald character’, which gave me something ridiculous, funny, and, at the same time, something repugnant.”
While usually a theatre performer, Manolache has done a number of films, including Jude’s I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. On the latter, the director learned of Bobita and wrote Do Not Expect Too Much for the 38-year-old actor and her monstrous TikTok alter-ego. “But what you see in the movie was written by Radu,” she clarifies. “I didn’t have changes to suggest. It was so powerful and punk.”
Employed by a Romanian company that produces corporate videos, Angela is sleep-deprived, unmotivated, and pissed off. Her latest task involves auditioning injured workers on camera so that the footage can be sent to an Austrian conglomerate planning to shoot an in-house movie on work safety. Meanwhile, Angela’s long, agonising drives, in which she panics about falling asleep at the wheel, are often interspersed with clips from Angela Goes On, a drama about a shattered taxi driver in Bucharest also by the name of Angela. Jude’s screenplay, too, was inspired by a real-life incident involving an overworked Romanian PA who died in a road accident.
“Our movie speaks about the capitalist society that we live in,” says Manolache. “We’re all touched by it. I’m hired by an institutionalised theatre and get a monthly salary, but even with this comfort, I’m not OK until the end of the month with what I earn. I have to do more and more in order to have a normal life.” Can shooting a movie ever be as demanding as Angela’s experience with corporate videos? “I didn’t feel tired because I enjoyed the filming, but we live in a society that always asks us to give more and more. In my real life, I feel, most of the time, exhausted, and not having something to give. The difference between me and Angela is that I can unplug for a few days.”
Unlike the Angela of Angela Goes On, a film shot during the reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Manolache’s Angela is outspoken – even in her non-Bobita form. The character’s infectious, impulsive behaviour is also matched by the topicality of Jude’s filmmaking, which, on Bad Luck Banging, had documentary footage of Bucharest during the pandemic. Manolache has been promised a role in Jude’s upcoming Dracula Park – she calls the script “brilliant, amazing, funny, and gorgeous”. Otherwise, she’d be pleased with more movies, full stop. “In Romania, the theatre scene has a more conservative way of seeing things, which hurts me, because I’m more of a progressive voice. The texts are put on stage in a non-disturbing form that doesn’t invite a dialogue on problematic subjects. But this film represents me so much.”
In particular, Manolache is pleased with the three-dimensionality of Angela, a woman whose TikTok persona refers to Romania as a “nation of sluts and pimps”, but who reads classical literature when her phone is switched off. “The character is modern and complex,” exclaims Manolache. “People said, ‘She’s a PA but reads Proust?’ And it’s like: yes, you can find this!” She adds: “There are few female characters in Romanian cinema that are like this, that are not the perfect woman. She has fragilities and grotesque issues. But it’s so great we have this form of representation. It’s important that artists make the public question things. I feel this conflict while doing my theatre work, because it’s not provoking at all, and it’s very safe”
Instead, on Jude’s film, Bobita is so inflammatory that not only do characters tell Angela to shut up, it even made Manolache wonder if the sexist language could be taken out of context. “I questioned it a lot when I started doing Bobita,” the actor admits. “I talked about it with feminist artists. I wanted to make sure that each time this guy is being toxic, you see that he’s in a bad situation. He shares a lot of shit, but, at the end, you see that he’s a loser. I didn’t want people to think I’m endorsing a toxic male approach. Audiences see that Bobita’s ridiculous and not in a position of power. It’s recycling the dynamic to make it obvious that men objectify us, dominate us, and sexualise us. I wanted to show that it’s hideous. I’m an actress, so these are my tools.”
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is out in UK cinemas today.
