4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Cristian Mungiu
2007

Ok kids, playtime's over. I know you had lots of fun learning to live and love and appreciate the foibles of life with the recent pregnancy comedies Knocked Up and Juno, but now its long past due to change out of the fuzzy jammies and see unplanned pregnancy for what it is for most people: a huge fucking nightmare.

Set in Ceausescu's oppressive late 80's Romania, University student Otilia agrees to aid her friend/roommate, frail and skittish Gabita, to illegally procure an abortion, a crime for which even casual collaborators are sent to the clink. An already shaky plan is made worse through Gabita's weak-willed lying, and a callous abortionist.

What's most successful about the picture is that while the gray cement, and beige linoleum of Bucharest is plenty bleak, our heroines are prominently middle class. The waters are never muddied by the maudlin poverty depicted in so many films on totalitarian regimes, leaving clear and unfettered view of the drama. Otilia's resilience and sacrifice is in some ways reminiscent of Lars Von Trier's "golden hearts" girls, yet her unemotional nuts-and-bolts practicality eschews all his uncomfortable melodrama in favor of uncomfortable reality. Otilia's faultless alpha-female quality provides a strange and moving contrast to the understandably flawed people surrounding her. Gabita's sniveling reticence is irritating, but innocent, and one feels a touch of sympathy for Otilia's boyfriend as he's blindsided at his mother's birthday.

The decent cinematography is at times marred by cliched shaky-cam, though many of the exterior tracking shots do a brilliant job of heightening the tension. The use of static long takes, frequently centered on Otilia's face are by far the best cinematic touch, particularly during a scene in which she's stuck at a hellish literati dinner party, with no escape and no idea how Gabita's post procedure is shaping up. The camera's unflinching stare is also brought to bear on the terminated fetus, a sadly lame looking prop that is nonetheless successful in conveying the tragedy of body horror. A date movie, this certainly is not.

Review by Brett A. Scieszka