Romania 2007
Starring : Anamaria Marinca, Lauria Vasiliu
Director : Cristian Mungiu

JANUARY isn't even half over yet, but it seems a safe bet that Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days will appear on many critics' top tens of 2008: the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last May (in what was, by general consensus, an unusually strong competition), and came out on top in surveys conducted by international critics' union Fipresci and Sight and Sound magazine - thus confirming the ample promise of writer-director Mungiu's shamefully-underexposed 2002 debut Occident.
   Set in (what we now know were to be) the last years of Ceausescu's dictatorship, it focuses on a pair of twentyish students. Pregnant Gabita (Vasiliu) decides to have an abortion - not a straightforward matter in a Catholic police-state, especially given her flighty impracticality. Luckily best-friend Otilia (Marinca) is much more level-headed, although she's not without her own personal problems. These get put on the back-burner as Otilia sets up a meeting with a "backstreet" abortionist (Vlad Ivanov): but hiring his services proves to be a tricky procedure - and his labours ultimately incur unexpectedly severe "charges."
   Mungiu's blunt, near real-time approach recalls another prize-garlanded Romanian export, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr Lazarescu (2006) - both films painting Romanian cities as hellish obstacle-courses for their hapless residents. But whereas Lazarescu slowly sprawled towards self-indulgence and implausibility, Mungiu expertly tightens the narrative screws while firmly resisting any hint of melodramatics. Instead, he wisely trusts his terrific (and seldom off-camera) star Marinca - her movie debut, astonishingly - to carry the picture on her deceptively slight shoulders.
   And, rather than tackling the pros and cons of abortion - the picture won't convert anyone who has strong feelings about the issue - 4/3/2 is, we realise, more about Otilia's self-realisation. As she reassesses her situation in the light of Gabita's misadventures, we see her taking charge not only of her friend's life but also of her own. And it surely isn't too fanciful, given the carefully-specific geographical and chronological setting of the film, to suggest that our heroine's move towards independence parallels Romania's own imminent, belated, and traumatic 'awakening.'

Neil Young

originally reviewed at Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival), October 2007