4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2007) ★★★★

Constantly winning after won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, this movie is also the big hit for Foreign Film Award at the upcoming Oscar. Although this is only Mungiu’s second film, it has revealed his amazing filmmaking skills. Just like what he mentioned at the QA after the screening, the most important thing is to keep the simplicity of a film, and this one does have this supremacy of being both simple and massively intense.

In a diminishing communist society that was gradually being capitalized, the thoughts of people were getting more and more open, sex was not the behavior only under marriages, especially to the university students who enjoyed this liberation. But as condoms were still illegal to have, only women had to take this risk while breaking the taboo.

Gabita, a female university student who faced the difficult situation of being pregnant, could only ask her best classmate and roommate, Otilia, for help. Being deeply loyal to her friend, Otilia said yes without any doubt and promised Gabita to get in touch with the private doctor on her behalf, and she also stepped into this event which she shouldn’t have been involved and affected her entire life. The timeline is only half a day, but also because of this, the film appears much more intense. It makes the audience follow the incidents the leading role faces closely and also leaves them limitless thoughts in the end.

The performance of Anamaria Marinca, who played the role Otilia, is absolutely incredible. She dealt with the psychological states of the role exquisitely. Vlad Ivanov, who played the private doctor, is very important to the film though he didn’t show up very long in it, and he was even selected as the best supporting actor of the year by L.A. Film Critics Association.

Not only this film is not out of date totally to see nowadays, but also it can be a very interesting contrast to the films about women gets pregnant by accident in the modern society, such as the widely acclaimed film this year “Juno.” The so-called “New Wave” for Romania film industry by the film society has reached a top point with this work.