Writer and direc­tor Cris­t­ian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is an unsen­sa­tional drama on a very sen­sa­tional topic. Like Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, it is shot in Dogme style with a hand­held cam­era, long takes, and no score. Both films remorse­lessly lead the viewer through jour­neys likely under­taken by many through­out human his­tory, although which most peo­ple would pre­fer to never know about. Although it seems ridicu­lous to talk about such a seri­ous film in terms of “spoil­ers”, I do wish to cau­tion any read­ers who have not yet seen the film to stop here.

In 1987 Roma­nia, stu­dents Otilia (Ana­maria Mar­inca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) pool their money and make elab­o­rate plans for an unspec­i­fied illicit event. What exactly the two young women seek is with­held for some time, build­ing con­sid­er­able sus­pense. No mat­ter one’s polit­i­cal or reli­gious beliefs, it is a sim­ple fact that any soci­ety in which abor­tion is ille­gal pro­duces a cor­re­spond­ing black mar­ket in dan­ger­ous back-alley pro­ce­dures. 4 Months is not a pas­sion­ate argu­ment for or against the legal­ity of abor­tion, but rather an unadorned illus­tra­tion of two women’s expe­ri­ences obtain­ing one.

4 Months begs com­par­i­son with another nat­u­ral­is­tic film on a sim­i­lar theme: Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake. It would be reduc­tive to say 4 Months is a “bet­ter” film, but in com­par­i­son, it does make Vera Drake seem like a con­ven­tional court­room drama with overly emo­tional acting.

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Offi­cial movie site: www.4months3weeksand2days.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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