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Review by David DiMichele

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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days goes by in what seems like seconds. Cristian Mungiu, director, manages to film the movie in real time, capturing one day with such raw power that he has his audience on a string the entire time. This means we have to wait it out feverishly for crucial revelations in the plot, and when they do come, they hit hard. Another tactic he has mastered is the art of physical direction, which can be quite simple if used in the right way. Many times during the movie he simply lays the camera down and lets it focus on someone's expression almost passionately. Voyeuristically, in fact. Most of the shots have been done without any cuts at all. They just flow steadily where another movie might soup the scene up with fancy effects and camera angles. Not here, though. Mungiu keeps his camera on our characters the entire time.

In the very first scene we experience a suffocating sense of extreme urgency. Not only does it seem claustrophobic and intense but, more importantly, we feel uncomfortable with the situation from the start. The scene shows two college roommates, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) and Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who live in a dorm which could be mistaken for a drug house. They are packing and planning nervously for some kind of trip. Turns out that Gabita is pregnant and going to have an undercover abortion done so she doesn't have to support a child while still in college. We don't find this fact out until more than half way through the film when we learn it carries grave consequences. It's 1987 Romania and while the dark days of dictatorship are on the decline, abortion is banned throughout the country. If caught, any participants in the scheme can end up in jail. Her partner in this crime is Otilia. She finds out that she's just as badly off as Gabita is, anyd maybe worse in fact. Otilia is the main focus of the movie. She has to weave through the cold streets, hotels, and birthday parties with the thought of Gabita in her mind.

The two of them set up an array of plans to get the abortion done right, but it turns out that all of it goes wrong. Gabita learned through a friend of a friend that there's a very professional man out there who performs these abortions. He goes by the name of Mr. Bebe (a ruthless Vlad Ivanov). When he meets the two girls he finds out that they haven't told him the whole truth: they couldn't get the right hotel Bebe wanted them to; Gabita is four months pregnant instead of two which now qualifies as murder if they get caught; and there's a mishap regarding the money that's meant to go to Bebe for the operation. In a sadistic tone of voice he tells the girls: "You think that 3,000 lei is worth my life? I wouldn't even know you girls if I saw you walking the streets." Venal and ruthlessly, he wants nothing but sex for his procedural work.

Mungiu doesn't badger us with what his own views of what's right and wrong with having an abortion. Rather he engages in both realms and offers up those stark views courtesy of his characters. There are moral choices and moral thoughts that we don't see when we're in the heat of the moment of an intense situation. Some do see and some just won't ever come to it. Mungiu, strangely enough, leaves it to us after the film is over to come up with our own thoughts. Yet we can't shake the daunting stare that Otilia burns through us.

Film rating: **** out of 4

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