4 Months 3 Weeks And 2 Days

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre drama Starring Annamaria Marnica, Laura Vasilu, Vlad Ivanov Directed by Cristian Mungiu Publisher Genius Products

Painfully straightforward and unsettling, Palme D’Or winner 4 Months 3 Weeks And 2 Days etches out a bleak world where women’s bodies belong to the state. It would make for compelling dystopian fiction, but for the fact that it portrays the real desperation of Romanian women under Nicolae Ceausescu’s 24-year long dictatorship.

Proclaiming “the fetus is the property of the entire society”, Ceausescu canonized maternity and criminalized sex education, birth control, and abortion in 1966 (a mandate in effect until the Revolution of 1989). This national policy, which instituted state gynecological exams and taxed childless women, was a breeding ground for poverty, distrust, corruption, and a thriving black market. It is this dehumanizing era of Romania’s not-too-distant past that informs 4 Months.

The year is 1987, a time when most college girls enjoy unprecedented sexual freedom and independence. But in Romania, Otelia (Annamaria Marnica), her roommate Gabita (Laura Vasilu), and the wise-beyond-their-years girls in their grossly overcrowded dorm trade their meager cash for cigarettes and milk powder, smuggle German birth control pills, and arrange clandestine abortions.

The film starts in medias res with resolute Otelia coaching terrified Gabita through carefully-laid plans. Though the act of abortion isn’t referred to nor the particulars (the father or circumstances) revealed, the stakes couldn’t be clearer.

Embarking on the first of many absurd, harrowing quests to help her desperate friend, Otelia borrows money from her doting boyfriend Adi and hurries to claim a room held in Gabi’s name (of which the snotty hotel clerk has no record). Quick on her feet, Otelia finagles a room at the only other hotel (to her chagrin, a more expensive one) and summons the unscrupulous abortionist, Mr. Bebe. Throughout, we see the hotel staff and “experts” (Bebe) through her eyes: rude, bureaucratic, disillusioned, lacking even the smallest shred of empathy. And soon, the stage is set for the act of complicity that will uncomfortably bind Gabita, Otelia, and Bebe for the next several hours.

Bebe, a shrewd manipulator who exemplifies the era’s corruption and opportunism, begins his negotiations by haranguing the women for “disobeying” his orders: the hotel is all wrong, Gabita did not meet him in person, she forgot a plastic sheet for the blood, and worst of all, lied about how far along she was in her pregnancy. Her lies-though told out of fear and naiveté- give him leverage to demand more than just the large amount of money they slaved to borrow. A sadistic misogynist relishing his petty window of control, Bebe threatens and blackmails the cornered girls to sleep with him. Especially telling is the fact that his price could ultimately lead Otelia, for one, to become pregnant and eventually seek an abortion herself. Nevertheless, she doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice herself, in a wordless expression of ultimate solidarity for her hapless friend.

The film’s nauseating, haunting cadence doesn’t stop there, as we’re then subjected to the crude abortion and its aftermath. The whole transaction between the trio is voyeuristically uncomfortable, a jarring contrast to another haunting movie about illegal abortion, Vera Drake. But unlike the soothing, motherly Vera, who selflessly aids “girls in trouble”, Bebe is an unwelcome (but begrudgingly necessary) presence in a realm that should not concern men, exhibiting (at best) contempt and (at worst) humiliation.

Between the procedure and its conclusion, Mungiu abruptly shifts tone to follow Otelia making yet another sacrifice—a command performance at Adi’s mother’s birthday party. In what might be the longest dinner scene ever, Otelia silently struggles with her pain while the elders blithely drink and rant about the disrespectful behavior of the youth of the day.

Shot starkly in muted tones, with lingering shots, minimal editing, and no background music to dilute its realism, 4 Months is viscerally believable. Nevertheless, its full emotional impact is hindered by Mungiu’s refusal to employ standard conceits such as close-ups, backstory, resolution, etc. We cringe for Otelia, but at the same time do not have the raw material to fully understand why she has sacrificed so much for the seemingly undeserving Gabi.

Ultimately, some knowledge of the Ceausescu era enhances the viewer’s emotional response and the significance of certain moments. The DVD’s special features help in this regard, as an interview with Cristian Mungiu gives context and meaning to very specific cultural phenomena such as the strong bond between college roommates together for often as long as 6 years.

But even lacking much background about this dark time for women (and men) in Romanian history, 4 Months 3 Weeks And 2 Days cuts deep by revealing, without the least bit of preaching, the national trauma born of a systematic ban on education, resources, and choice.