4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (NR)

Running Time : 1 hours, 55 minutes
Directed by Cristian Mungiu
Starring

[View Trailer]

Synopsis:

In the late-'80s Romania of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the burdens of Soviet-style dictatorship have imposed a gray pall on the country. The story centers on Otilia, a smart, illusionless student, and her pretty, mopey roommate Gabita. Gabi is despondent for a reason: she's pregnant and is about to try to get, with Otilia's help, an abortion — illegal at the time in Romania. Through the friend of a friend, Gabi has secured the name of someone who'll do the job: a man who calls himself Mr. Bebe. Gabi is afraid of meeting him, so Otilia is forced to go on the errand, after borrowing some money from her own boyfriend. Both women unwittingly find themselves burrowing deep down a rabbit hole of unexpected revelations.

Abortion was banned in Romania in 1966. By the time Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed 23 years later, an estimated half-million women had died as a result of botched illegal abortions. The nation's overflowing orphanages were notorious for their subhuman conditions.

“The tale is so compelling that it seduces viewers as a fairy tale does a child. They simply must know, as the plot knot coils tighter around the characters, What Happens Next. It's not spoiling anything to say that the resolution is right and realistic — and far from the ending Hollywood would devise, if it ever dared to make a movie like 4 Months,” writes Richard Corliss of Time.

While the subject matter of the film may be controversial to some viewers, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days has stirred controversy for another reason. The film was nominated at the Golden Globes for Best Foreign Picture, and won one of the film industry’s most prestigious awards: the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. However, the film did not even receive a nomination for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards.

“The Oscars are absurd, yet they can help a microscopically budgeted foreign-language film find a supportive audience. And ‘4 Months’ deserves to be seen by the largest audience possible, partly because it offers a welcome alternative to the coy, trivializing attitude toward abortion now in vogue in American fiction films,” writes Manohla Dargis of the New York Times.

Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal writes: “I'm not in the habit of invoking the subject of honors in the course of a review; normally that's a publicist's job. But Cristian Mungiu's elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film…needs special help in finding the audience it deserves. That means an audience willing to go in with eyes -- and spirit -- wide open, and to exchange the usual pleasures of entertainment for a dark, unforgettable study of implacable evil, personal responsibility and unintended consequences.”