4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile)
Set in Communist Romania in the final years of the Nicolae Ceauşescu era, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days tells the harrowing story of two female students who try to arrange an illegal abortion, 20 years after the practice was outlawed so that Ceauşescu would have more subjects to rule. Directed by Cristian Mungiu, it won the Palme d’Or and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Mungiu based the film on a real story he had heard which he said “still affected me after more than 15 years”, and which had been repeated countless times among young Romanian women who turned to the black market to avoid the indignity and poverty that would accompany single motherhood. The film cost just $600,000 to make and forms part of a planned series of stories from Romania before the fall of the Iron Curtain, called Memories from the Golden Age.
Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasilu play Otilia and Gabita, two female students who share a shabby dorm in a provincial Romanian town. The title of the film refers to the exact amount of time that the scatterbrained Gabita has left things before arranging an abortion. But she lies about the length of time she has been pregnant not only to the abortionist, but also to Otilia.
With characteristic selflessness, Otilia offers to help her friend at every stage of the illegal operation that she herself has procured. Not only does she help Gabita find the money for the procedure; she also arranges the hotel room and goes to meet the abortionist himself, called Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). It is only when the two hapless students are alone with him in their hotel room that the full horror of their situation is revealed.
Having paid above the odds for a room and carrying a foetus that is growing larger by the day, Gabita will suffer almost any indignity to terminate her pregnancy. But what follows is nothing short of horrific, leaving both girls numb, unable to comprehend the cruelty of one man who profits on the desperation of those trapped by a callous and inhumane regime.
An evening dinner party, in which Otilia is forced to meet the emphatically bourgeois parents of her demanding boyfriend, crowns the hellish sequence. Squeezed onto a table with too many relatives, Otilia must swallow her revulsion and rage and put on a brave face for the old folk, who pompously berate the pampered younger generation, paying no attention whatsoever to their new guest.
Mungiu’s screenplay and Oleg Mutu’s piercing cinematography share a number of characteristics with other productions of what has been dubbed the New Romanian Wave, such the deliberate use of simple, long shots with no music. Dark corridors, faulty lights and shots where you can’t see more than a foot behind contribute to a constant sense of foreboding. The static camera captures the offhand gestures and remarks by which, in a place ruled by faceless authority, those with a small amount of power drive others into compliance and complacency. Just as the camera watches unfalteringly, everyone from the hotel receptionist to the wedding guests seems to be on the prowl for incriminating information.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is the most chilling film to date from a recent spate of Eastern Block exposés that includes Goodbye Lenin and The Lives of Others, which examined the practices of the East German Stasi (Secret Police). Otilia and Gabita’s whole nightmare ordeal is played out almost in real time, with no breaks for humour or reflection.
Marinca as Otilia is superb at displaying inner turmoil, whether watching Gabita being groped during her operation, or enduring the ceaseless prattle of smug relatives who long ago chose the route of compliance for an easier life. A bit like the ambulance attendant in the 2005 Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu who drove a dying man around all night, insisting on a hospital for him, Otilia displays an instinctive heroism in the way she handles Gabita. Exasperated with her friend’s dishonesty and failure to take responsibility for anything, Otilia still keeps on trying to help, despite the fact the she herself is in emotional turmoil.
Vasiliu gives an excellent performance as the resolutely selfish Gabita. Though passive and empty-headed at first, she appears in a state of clinical shock after her ordeal. Forced to grow up in the space of a few hours, Gabita will be able to forget neither the heartless cruelty of her oppressor, nor the sacrificial kindness of a friend who acted more like a sister.
Ivanov is chilling as the abortionist who is secure in his grasp of the young women’s vulnerability. With clinical coldness he explains the terms of his arrangement, and treats the girls’ futile pleas for compassion as if they were the ultimate effrontery.
The film gives a bleak portrayal of life in communist Romania, but its main focus is the way in which two friends interact with each other, and silently come to terms with the evil they have witnessed.
