Theatrical Review of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

---

Tools:
Send to a friend »

---

I am ashamed to admit that I have not seen any of the five films nominated for this year´s Best Foreign Film Oscar. Nonetheless, I know that the nominees comprise perhaps the strongest field in Academy history since the selection committee was unable to find room for Christian Mungiu´s extraordinary "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days." Mungiu´s was good enough to earn the Palme d´Or at Cannes, and rave reviews from virtually every critic who has written about it, but it simply wasn´t good enough to compete on Oscar´s home field. Either that or the selection committee has absolutely no idea what it´s doing, and we know that can´t possibly be the explanation, can it?

Romania has delivered more than its fair share of cinematic gems over the past several years, Cristi Puiu´s "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and Corneliu Porumboiu´s "12:08 East of Bucharest" chief among them. Like its recent predecessors, "4 Months" relies heavily on behaviorist long takes; the camera lingers for several minutes in many cases simply to watch its characters sit and talk, clean, make coffee, or get an illegal abortion in a seedy hotel room. No, "4 Months" is not destined to become the feel-good sleeper hit of the year like "Juno" even though both films feature young pregnant characters.

Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) helps her college roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) arrange her abortion, a procedure still illegal in 1987 (the film´s setting), two years before the ouster and subsequent execution of Nicolae Ceausescu. Otilia works hard to arrange every detail, securing money from her boyfriend, finding a hotel room, and meeting with the abortion doctor. Otilia has to make all the arrangements because Gabita simply isn´t up to the task. In one of the film´s many brilliant touches, the woman getting the abortion isn´t the most sympathetic character in the world. Gabita is lazy, forgetful and downright dishonest, forcing Otilia to make some gruesome decisions to help her friend. Gabita does not become a sad, helpless victim of the system, but plays an active (or rather an excessively passive) role in her own exploitation.

The abortion scenes are prolonged and gruesome (though not overtly graphic), yet the film´s most grueling scene takes place outside the hotel room altogether. Otilia must leave Gabita alone to attend a party thrown by her boyfriend´s mother. She gives Gabita the number, and promises to be back as quickly as possible, but she winds up trapped in an inane dinner table conversation. The camera remains motionless with Otilia in the center and the whole family clustered claustrophobically tight around her. The tension is already thick when the phone begins to ring off-screen. Nobody moves; Otilia is hemmed in, and nobody else cares. As the phone continues to ring, the scene becomes nearly unbearable. It´s a testament to the power of duration as well as to the power of off-screen space; just a simple phone ring mixed in on the soundtrack functions like a lid slammed down on a boiling pot.

Mungiu (who also wrote the script) also toys with audience expectation, planting several plot points and props that never pay off, at least not in the expected fashion. Marinca is simply brilliant in the lead role. Her performance is as naturalistic as the camera work. When she confronts her boyfriend at the dinner, their argument is so complex and multi-layered it´s obvious that Marinca has completely inhabited her role. Vlad Ivanov also turns in a menacing performance as Dr. Bebe, whose monstrous nature is underscored by the matter-of-fact way in which he approaches this grim transaction. Even under Ceausescu´s Communist regime, everything in Romania is for sale for the right price, whether it´s orange Tic-Tacs for sale at the dorm, or women´s bodies in a hotel room.

All things considered, it´s hardly a surprise that "4 Months" was passed up for Oscar consideration. The Foreign Film award, like most Academy Awards, usually goes to a safe and respectable choice (e.g. "The Lives of Others" last year). Both in terms of subject matter in form, "4 Months" is anything but safe, though its use of extreme long takes has become something of a staple of recent art-house cinema from Bela Tarr to Tsai Ming-liang to all three of the recent Romanian masterpieces. Whether the emergence of Puiu, Porumboiu, and Mungiu at roughly the same time presages a major movement in Romanian film or simply represents a coincidental cluster of young talent (Puiu is the oldest at 40) remains to be seen. What is certain now is that "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" is one of the best films of 2007 or, if you go by American release dates, one of the early candidates for best film of 2008.

For those who like numbers, let's call it a 9/10 on the DVDTown scale.

---

---