4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, and 4 DAYS (4 luni, 3 saptami si 4 zile)

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
IFC Films/ Mobra Films
Grade: B+
Directed by: Cristian Mungiu
Written By: Cristian Mungiu
Cast: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alex Potocean, Luminita Gheorghiu, Adi
Carauleanu
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 1/3/08
Opens: January 25, 2008

Considering that all human beings must think of having kids of their own, one wonders why there are not dozens of films each year about pregnancy. Last year, "Knocked Up" treated the issue in a comical, even vulgar manner, while "Lake of Fire" took a balanced view of abortion. Already in January of this year, two gems are turning up in theaters. One, the documentary called "The Business of Being Born," criticizes the American way of giving birth in hospitals, holding that obstetricians are overqualified to deliver babies and that midwives should be relegated to that job. Another, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 4 Days," is a Romanian drama that takes aim against the former Communist government of Bucharest and, by extension, takes a jab at our own American antipathy toward abortion procedures. Take a look at this last film...

Let me guess. When your 10th grade World History teacher asked, “What do you think of Communism?” like any red-blooded, patriotic American, you answered, “Sounds good in theory: doesn’t work in practice.” But when your teacher asked you what you think of legalized abortion, I wouldn’t chance a guess, because replies would be all over the map. “No way,” or OK before the fetus is viable.” “How about, after 4 months, 3 weeks, and 4 days?” That’s a tough one. Many a student would say as an obiter dictum, “Who is so stupid to wait so long?”

The principal character of this movie apparently is. but given her age and the kind of regime she lives under, maybe no. Cristian Mungiu’s naturalistic drama, “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 4 Days” can be taken as a political polemic, an anti-Communist tract, which in part it is. It could be interpreted as a statement about abortion, which it truly is–though by the conclusion you may not have a real clue what the director believes. Most of all, though, the film is not so much about politics or privacy rights as it is an intimate story of two women who, still students in college, haven’t much of a clue about how the world works. The tightly-wound story is told without music–which proves that more is less, in that Mangiu’s drama is small where, for example, Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth: The Golden Age: is epic in scope and dependent for entertainment value on music that blows the audience out of their seats. Unlike just about every film made in Hollywood, Mungiu has his cameraman, Oleg Mutu, utilize long takes. Without vertiginous cutting, sans music, and with muted colors (Mutu embraces what some like to call “puke green”), “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 4 Days” has no chance of commercial box office, but plays to a discerning audience that may not leave the theater with a changed view of abortion or an altered opinion on Communism. But spectators will have spots in their heart filled with an empathy for what vulnerable people go through when they are in a panic and without viable options.

The story takes place during the waning days of Ceausescu’s Communist regime in Romania. Anamaria Marinca stars in an absorbing role as Otilia, a college student who has mixed feelings about her boyfriend, Adi (Alex Potocean), but one who will go the distance for her roommate, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). The mousy, shy Gabita looks slim enough on the screen but having her several monthly periods, she is now 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days pregnant. We know nothing about the potential daddy and not much more about Gabita–who would be up the creek were it not for her one true friend. Otilia digs up the money for an illegal abortion, as the procedure has been illegal under a regime that encourages population growth. After a hassle with two reservation clerks, she books a room in a seedy hotel, hopping into the car of an abortionist, Bebe (Vlad Ivanov)–a cynical perfectionist who is ready to bolt since some of his exact instructions were not met. The bane of any feminist or, in fact, of any decent person, Bebe senses his power over the vulnerable “patient” and demands sex from both women in addition to his fee.

If a scared Gabita becomes shell-shocked by the whole grungy proceeding, Otilia does not fare much better. Her boyfriend, Adi, coerces her into having dinner with his insufferably bourgeois family, the small table surrounded by two doctors and others who drink wine, talk loudly, and show little sensitivity toward the young couple. Adi’s mother invades a private, tension-filled tete-a-tete between the two young lovers by entering her son’s room to insist that they indulge in her creme brulee and then report downstairs for meringue.

The surliness of the hotel receptionists is probably meant as a comment on a system of government that relates to its citizens like the ones in the old Soviet gag: “We pretend we are working and they pretend they are paying us.” The buildings are run-down, the photographic palette is dishwater-dull. But the socio-political commentary is vivid, as is the performance, in particular, of Anamaria Marinca. The film is likely to be spoken of in the same breath as Mike Leigh’s “Vera Drake,” about working-class life in the England of the 1950's featuring an older cleaning woman who is secretly an abortionist; and Cristi Puiu’s Romanian pic, “The Death of Mr. Lazerascu,” about a lonely 63-year-old man who gets sick and is sent by bureaucrats from hospital to hospital.

Not Rated. 113 minutes © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online