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Benjamin Wood
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Score: 3.5/5

Set in communist Romania, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a film centering around a young college girl's illegal abortion. Yet, the film is as much about friendship and human interaction as it is about abortion. Refusing to tell the audience whether the decision to have the abortion is right or wrong, writer/director/co-producer Cristian Mungiu is more freely able to focus his story on the people involved.

I mean it when I say "people" involved, and not "characters." Indeed, 4 Months is a fictional story, but the film is contructed with the barest of filmmaking flourishes, and ends up feeling as much like a harrowing hand-held documentary as it does a fictional movie. The images are grainy and sometimes almost indecipherable, and there is no music to be found anywhere in the film. Single takes can last for minutes, and a single character may be focused on for the duration of an entire conversation, something that is rare even in many of the cheaper, artier films which 4 Months will almost undoubtedly be associated with.

The acting is superb. Almost every actor is able to naturally flow into the story, and seems like a real person, and not a caricature. Laura Vasiliu infuses Gabita with the detachment and emotional distancing that sometimes comes when having to make a decision as life-changing as having an illegal abortion that could lead to either jail or death. Anamaria Marinca is even better as Gabita's friend Otilia, who has less to lose than Gabita, yet also cares even more and does everything she can to make sure that Gabita comes out of the situation okay. Vlad Ivanov, the illegal abortionist "Mr. Bebe," is believably mysoginistic and easy to hate, which is a testament to the actor's skill as much as it is the nastiness of the character. The lone exception is Alexandru Potocean's performance as Otilia's boyfriend Adi. Adi's character seems entirely peripheral (except to possibly give some insights to Otilia's motivation to so steadfastly help out her friend), and Potocean's acting does nothing to make the character more important.

Ultimately, the film, in many ways, succumbs to the power of the acting and the story. It becomes too real, too intimate, and it is just as difficult to look at the screen as it is to look away. The handheld camera is able to bestow realism, and yet also works towards disorienting the viewer. The story is simple and harrowing, and yet its realism left me wondering what the point of watching this film was. Was it supposed to be about the condemnation of banning abortion? Was it about the ruthlessness of the communist regime which ruled Romania until the 1990's? Was it more about friendship and interactions, and the ways in which we help out those who we are close to, often risking our own wellbeing for the sake of others?

4 Months might be about all of those things, or none of them. The problem I had, however, was that the only thing I could think of while exiting the theater was how uncomfortable I felt, and how I doubt that I will ever be able to sit through watching this film again, and I believe that many of the people who see it will feel the same way. Whether that's a good or bad thing, however, is ultimately up to each person to decide for themselves.

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