Gabita is pregnant. To be exact, Gabita is 4 months, 3 weeks and two days pregnant. In Romania, in 1987, during the last days of the Ceausescu regime, this was the point at which an act of termination switched from being illegal to being an act of out-and-out murder. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days – the first film, apparently, in a proposed series by director Cristian Mungiu, ironically titled ‘Tales of the Golden Age’ – concerns an afternoon and evening spent procuring one such termination.
Gabita’s friend Laura (played by Anamaria Marinca, a performance every bit as weighty as Daniel Day-Lewis’ scene-chewing turn in There Will Be Blood) is in charge of booking a room, meeting the abortionist and ensuring payment is made. Of course nothing works out quite as planned: the original hotel booking has fallen through, the abortionist, Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), makes demands above and beyond a sum of money, Laura’s passive-aggressive boyfriend forces her to attend his mother’s birthday party – and all the while stern, unpleasant people demand IDs, everyday necessities are bartered for on the black market and characters move through a world that is at once washed out, desperate and spiritually vacant.
Although perhaps best viewed as a savage slice of social realism, the pacing and accrual of unpleasantness serves to build both density and pressure, such that the viewing experience is akin to watching a philosophical thriller. Perhaps most curiously of all, the expectation of horror – horror that takes place largely off-camera – creates unexpected sympathies, drawing you in as active participant, as surely as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, but with different ends.
One to file, then, between the flourishing Romanian new wave (think Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr Lazarescu and Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest) and the recent European re-evaluation of the fall of Communism (particularly Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others and Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin!). 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is bravura and bleak, a film fully deserving of the Palme d’Or it picked up at Cannes last year.
The winner of 2007's Palme d'Or, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days forms part of the recent wave of reflective Romanian cinema which has produced some of the most exhilarating and challenging filmmaking of recent years.
Set during the final days of that country's communist regime (the director, tongue in cheek, calls this 'The Golden Age'), the film explores the restrictions on freedom and choice, both internal and external.
Gabita is pregnant; Otilia, who shares a student dormitory with her, helps organize a shady hotel room appointment for an illegal abortion. As we follow Otilia through her day, we see how the experience changes her every bit as much as her friend.
By turns the film is an appallingly explicit and beautifully naturalistic treatment of a challenging subject.
Lust, Caution
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4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
