Cristian Mungiu
4 mesi, 3 settimane e 2 giorni

Yesterday, I realized I had free tickets for a well-known cinema in the capital. It was the last day to use them, so even though I had to wake up early today, I decided not to let them expire. I gathered two friends, and we headed to the multiplex, choosing the movie at the last minute.

Despite the eighteen theaters, there wasn't much to decide, as the start times for the other films were impractical. So, we decided on this film, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days," which I had seen on posters on the street but hadn't paid much attention to. Apparently, it's the film that won the Cannes Festival. "Let's hope for the best..." I thought, and the film began.

This review will inevitably delve deeply into the plot, so if you don't want to know that the butler did it or get bored reading more than ten lines, stop here.

It's the story of a clandestine abortion. We are in Romania in the 1980s, before the fall of Ceaușescu. The film begins with the preparations of two out-of-town students for the abortion of one of them. The excessive slowness of the initial scene, the focus on dialogues, and on details seemingly insignificant to the plot is a constant feature of this film. It takes a while to understand what drives the actions of the two girls, especially at the beginning.

Gaby, the pregnant girl, is not very sharp. She is forced, for unspecified reasons, to take this action, and although very dependent on her friend Otilia, her clumsy lack of confidence will unintentionally hinder her. As for Otilia, she is not at peace. She seems to be subject to the reality surrounding her, made of sordid, decaying environments on the verge of the grotesque and inhabited by coldly malevolent characters. She is dating Ady, a fellow student, seemingly caring but actually very concerned with appearances. The two girls live in the student house, and this is their first experience of this kind. They rely on hearsay and recommendations from girls who have been through it. That's how, after detailed ordeals to find a hotel to secretly abort, they come into contact with Mr. Bebe, who immediately appears as a sordid, cold, pedantic figure constantly reminding the two girls that what they are about to do is risky for all three, and that he risks jail himself.

In that hotel room, the first thing we learn is that Gaby is a liar, and it's unclear whether she lies because she's clumsy or because she too deludes herself in some way of saving appearances: she's not two months pregnant as she told Otilia and Mr. Bebe, but over four. Four months, three weeks, two days. What was an abortion now appears more like a murder.

Mr. Bebe, who becomes less accommodating with the discovery of this detail, increases the pressure on the two girls: he pretends to be nervous but actually revels in their misfortune. He backs them psychologically into a corner and reveals himself as the soulless scoundrel that he is: in exchange for his help, he forces them to have sexual intercourse with him. Exemplary is the scene where Gaby, unable to refuse this blackmail, takes refuge in the bathroom and turns on the faucet not to hear her friend being raped in the next room.

This film is like a hyper-realistic painting: the situations, the characters, the dialogues... everything is meticulously detailed. And everything is presented in a raw, unapologetic manner to the eye (and sensibility) of the viewer. There is an intensive use of sequence shots and fixed frames: from the opening and throughout the film, there will be about fifteen, most excessively long.

Like when Otilia, after the assault, goes to dinner with her boyfriend's unsuspecting parents: the camera frames her, Ady, his parents frontally, almost crushing them, squeezing them, and cutting off other characters whose lines you can still hear just off-screen. The atmosphere of forced celebration (it's Ady's mother's birthday) and the obtuse dialogues of the characters clash with Otilia's increasingly vacant stare. The scene lasts over ten minutes and has a highly claustrophobic effect. The actors are very good, and it's difficult to maintain the right tension for the interminable length of those scenes.

When Otilia returns to the hotel, Gaby informs her that she managed to expel the fetus: the abortion was successful. And here perhaps is the most shocking scene of the film, which goes even further with a fixed shot of the fetus left on the bathroom floor. At that moment, absolute silence.

It needs to be disposed of, and Otilia, first curious and then invisibly shaken, doesn't even know how to pick it up from there. What follows is her night journey in desolation in search of a building with a garbage chute. The shots are shaky, grainy, at times the light fades completely and nothing can be seen. You can hear the sound of her footsteps, her confusion is clear from how she tries to retrace her steps, from her hesitation. Eventually, she gets rid of her cumbersome burden and returns to the hotel. Gaby is eating, asking her friend where she buried it (she didn't want it thrown in the trash).

The film ends there. Abruptly, as if someone had pulled the plug on the projector. "End of the first half?..", one of my friends says, ironically referring to the film's length (almost two hours).

Throughout, the film doesn't explain why Otilia goes to such lengths, risks jail, and even sacrifices her own dignity to help a person who in the end will hesitate to even thank her, as she hesitated throughout the film. The only explanation is the absolute lack of trust, the true main protagonist of this film: there's a lack of trust in Gaby who lies and doesn't tell Otilia important details, there's a lack of trust in others in all the bureaucratic gestures and cold words of the hoteliers and guards, there's a lack of trust in the future inherent in the act of abortion. I believe Otilia eventually realized all this and understood how she couldn't rely on anyone, not even Ady, too ensconced in the warm cocoon of his family. That's why she takes on Gaby and faces this grotesque ordeal: in the hope of a "do ut des" of which she still has no guarantees.

The film's perspective isn't easy to understand; it's a slice of human misery, so the apparent criticism of abortion could easily turn into an interpretation of it as an act of love. Which nevertheless does not save it from being a traumatic wound, on the contrary. Occasionally, in the theater, I felt like laughing: I had never seen such abysses of grotesque all together. Indeed, upon leaving the theater, more or less everyone among the few spectators present was in the grip of hysterical laughter, myself included. As if it were a film by the Vanzina brothers.. Maybe we were shaking off a bit of heaviness.

I confess that if I hadn't had free tickets, it would never have occurred to me to subject myself to such a spectacle. Somehow though, this is a film that stays with you, that really pushes you to reflect. I went into detail in the description because I wanted to convey the sense of misery and sadness that pervades the entire film. At least if someone decides to see it, they will know what they're getting into. And then it's a sort of catharsis.

In the end, I believe that it's good for films like these to be produced. In hindsight, they should be watched every now and then, as we are dazed by green ogres and flying men.