4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Perhaps, Gabita is the most unknowledgeable young lady ever played a lead role in a film about her own pregnancy. Even if you felt “Juno” was too clever by half, two hours with Gabita could have you purchasing a ticket to Bucharest for Diablo Cody. But thanks to Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), this is indeed a powerful film and an unadorned visual feat. It is her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) that drives it.

It’s set at the end of the 1980s. Romania still cringes under the brainless rule of Ceausescu. In Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” Gabita wants an abortion which was then illegal not due to moral reasons but because Ceausescu needed more subjects to rule over. She eventually turns towards desperation on her roommate Otilia whom she pleads with and agrees to assist her so much as doing everything for her except having the abortion itself.

The two friends are followed within twenty four hours as they journey through frustration, stupidity, duplicity, cruelty and desperation in a country where there would be no market at all if it were not for black.

This idea of personal responsibility is completely alien to Gabita. Given what we know about their society needing boldness, courage and improvisation; how has she survived into early adulthood? And so first off she convinces Otilia to collect money for operation expenses. Then she asks Otilia to go ahead of her when going to see him for abortion advice and fails in making any reservation with the hotel he recommends etcetera that nearly ruins the deal: Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov)that even his name does not sound Romanian.

The movie confronts its characters head-on in an intentional manner.“4 Months,” has no fancy shots or effects or quick cuts; in fact, Mungiu and his cinematographer, Oleg Mutu, chose only one shot per scene. This makes it imperative that all shots be framed with care as well as set up properly concerning camera position and movement. In doing so the film also needs to keep the context of each action within the framework even when the ostensible subject is partly visible or unseen at all. The film has no music either dialogue or silence are its only sounds.

Here she is a heroic figure rather like the paramedic in Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) who spent an evening driving a dying man around Bucharest’s hospitals looking for someone to take him in. Otilia gets frustrated with her selfish, self-obsessed friend but keeps on trying to assist Gabi nonetheless despite having problems of her own.

One of these being her boyfriend Adi (Alex Potocean), who is himself such a narcissist that one wonders if Otilia gravitates towards this type. Even though she tries to explain that she and Gabita have urgent personal business, he insists on Otilia coming to his house to meet his family that night. He turns it into a test of her love. People who do that do not realize that compromising would show their love for each other.

Attending the dinner party she goes to could be a horror show had it been in one of Mike Leigh’s social embarrassment exhibitions. Crowded around by too many people, too much smoking and drinking, and no one who pays her any attention, she is filmed doing nothing while we wait for her to insert a fork into someone’s eye. Adi follows her out and drags her into his room when Adi tries to walk away from making the phone call, but then Adi’s mom barges in on them which explains where he got it from.

Afterwards with their friendlies did they ended up in an abortionist hotel room that is as unpleasant, heartless and merciless as can be imagined. Just go ahead and find out for yourself. There is also a final scene where Gabita and Otilia agree never to mention this night again. Some see this scene as anti-climactic whereas I see it as inevitable. Myself, if I was Otilia I would not even want to see Gabita again; instead I would send for my things through Adi.

The filmmakers from former Soviet Union countries have taken advantage of their freedom now to tell us the stories they were not allowed to say before. One example of such movies was “The Lives of Others” based on East German secret police thus representing Germany at the Oscar awards contest. In Romania however, this era has spawned some powerful films like “Mr. Lazarescu,” “12:08 East of Bucharest” (2006) and “4 Months.” It won Palme d’Or at Cannes 2007 which upset many American critics who liked but admired it less than No Country for Old Men.

People have written much about what the film reflects about Romanian society, but until some years ago obtaining an illegal abortion was just about the same thing here as elsewhere including Great Britain as seen in Leigh’s Vera Drake. The movie’s appeal does not lie so much in the atrocities faced by the friends, but who they are and how they conduct themselves.

Otilia’s character is brought to life by Anamaria Marinca while Laura Vasiliu’s acting in Gabita. In fact these two characters feel more real than any others I have come across in a long time.

Watch 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days For Free On Gomovies.