Crisitan Mungiu, “4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days” (2007)
A bleak and often heartbreaking offering from young Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, this movie about a young woman who helps her friend arrange an illegal abortion is an intelligent examination of friendships under the strain of an oppressive and inhumane political regime. The film is set in Romania in the waning years of President Nicolae Ceausescu who together with his wife Elena ruled Romania for over 2 decades as though the country was their personal fiefdom: the Ceausescu government forbade imports of nearly everything (which explains the all-pervasive poverty in the film) and pursued a population growth policy which among other things made birth control and abortions illegal.
Two college students, Ottilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), are room-mates in a students’ dormitory in Bucharest: for the movie’s first half-hour, the two girls are making arrangements for something the audience is kept in suspense about. Gabita fusses over a plastic sheet and sends Ottilia on various errands to get money or cigarettes. Ottilia drops in on her boyfriend (Alexandru Potocean) briefly and reluctantly agrees to come to his mother’s birthday party in the evening. She trudges around different hotels to find a room and book it for 2 – 3 days. As the movie progresses and Ottilia meets a mysterious man, Dr Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), it becomes apparent that she is organising a secret and possibly dangerous abortion for Gabita who is at least three months pregnant.
The characters of the two girls become clear-cut in the film’s first ten minutes just from their dialogue and the camera’s constant tracking of Ottilia’s movements alone: Gabita presents as shy and retiring but the shyness masks self-centredness and lack of consideration for others; Ottilia is an uncomplaining, obliging work-horse who spends more time than she should looking after Gabita’s interests. Marinca puts in a brave and stoic virtuoso performance as Ottilia who over the course of the film comes to question the nature of her friendship with Gabita and the sacrifices she makes for her. There are many scenes where the camera is still and focusses on Ottilia’s face as she smokes or stares down at the floor, her face a study in conflicting emotions and suppressed anger at Gabita’s constant lies and lack of responsibility; or follows her as she stumbles about in the midnight dark, her breathing audible and close to hyperventilating in fear, as she tries to find a place in the city to dispose of the aborted foetus. One highlight of the film which illustrates the existential trap Ottilia finds herself in is the 10-minute dinner party scene where, surrounded by her boyfriend’s parents and family friends who gossip about the “good old times” and the uselessness of modern Romanian youth, she is forced to sit, say hello and try to eat and drink. Viewers get a real sense from seeing the trapped expression on Ottilia’s face of how stuck she is between her boyfriend and his demands, and her friend Gabita and her demands.
Ivanov as the ironically named Bebe is a suitably creepy abortionist who exacts his pound of flesh when the girls are unable to fulfill his changing and manipulative demands. Vasiliu is good as the thoughtless Gabita who gets herself and Ottilia in strife over the abortion arrangements – and that’s not even considering the consequences both girls face if the hotel staff discover what they and Dr Bebe have done. The sullen staff in the various hotels, all concentrating on the minutiae of their jobs and behaving like petty nit-picking bureaucrats, give the film the air of a spy thriller and help ratchet up the tension that becomes ever more overwhelming as Ottilia passes in and out of the hotel constantly and remains even when the end credits start to roll.
The use of bleached film stock suits the oppressive, grinding nature of Romanian society in the late 1980’s. Camera shots are steady and often very long, apart from the scene where Ottilia looks for somewhere to get rid of the foetus late at night and then the camera movements are jerky to emphasise the girl’s panic and fear at being caught. My understanding is that electricity was severely rationed at the time and all streetlights were out at night; there may have been night curfews as well which would explain Ottilia’s fear. Mungiu artfully sets up tableau-like shots in which Ottilia is trapped (the dinner table scene) or to suggest that Ottilia and Gabita’s friendship has changed for the worse (the restaurant table scene which emphasises the physical space between the two girls). In the latter half of the film there are scenes of long silences in which the actors’ facial expressions become very important and it’s in these scenes that Marinca and Vasiliu do their best if hardest work. The look of the film is naturalistic, the acting is minimal and driven by the plot so the film has the feel of a TV news crew following real people engaged in doing something illegal.
Romania in the late 1980’s is portrayed as a society where social capital has become ground down and exhausted by the state: people no longer care for one another, they live in their own world obsessed with status and material things, and there’s a mercenary “what’s in it for me?” attitude prevalent. Bebe takes advantage of the girls’ naivety and Gabita’s lies to get as much out of them as he wants; what he wants isn’t limited to money. The guests at the dinner table gabble about the past and find Ottilia quaint because her parents are working-class and she is the first person in her family to go on to higher education. Ottilia finds herself wondering whether other people will care for her as much as she has for selfish Gabita should she (Ottilia) fall pregnant. Perhaps this is the most devastating message of the film, that people’s compassion and sense of community can easily be eroded by ideology and relentless enforced poverty by the whims of a few.