Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov

Director: Cristian Mungiu

Classification: 15

Any feature film from Romania is a rarity, especially one as successful as Mungiu’s latest has been. The film was universally acclaimed by the critics at Cannes last year and went on to win the Palme d’Or.

Opening onto a bleak, de-saturated 1987, Mungiu’s masterful movie follows the arduous journey of two college students, Otilia (Marinca) and her friend Gabita (Vasiliu), who has arranged to get an illegal abortion. With abortion no longer being a particularly “hot topic” in either the UK or Romania (the legislation to repeal restrictions on abortion came into place in 1994) it could be difficult to see the film’s relevance. But that would only be if it were judged as one trying to talk about the political issue of abortion. It is not. Romania has certainly had a tumultuous history with the issue of abortion and the rights of pregnant woman, but that is not what Mungiu intends to express. This is not a protest film; it is a film of depictions; of desperations. It is a resoundingly human production, and Gabita’s abortion adds to the austere social milieu in which this humanity clings to its existence.

Very quickly, this becomes a story, not about Gabita, not about an abortion, but about Otilia, the friend walking the peripheries, trying frantically to find solutions to the increasingly dangerous problems that arise. Oleg Mutu’s nervous handheld camera work often uses extremely shallow focus to pick out Oltilia from the landscape. It is Otilia that sorts out the arrangements with the black market abortionist Bebe (played scrupulously by Vlad Ivanov).

Mutu’s cinematography is brutal and striking, and works perfectly with Marinca’s exceptional performance. With Gabita put to one side in the hotel where Bebe performs the abortion, the film is an insightful play between remarkable honesty and snowballing tension. Otilia’s claustrophobic world translates directly to the screen; the frame jittering, losing focus, drained of colour, and I don’t believe there was a single person in the audience who wasn’t with her the whole way. A particularly excruciating scene takes place in Otilia’s boyfriend Adi’s house, where she is dragged in to join a birthday dinner for Adi’s mother; the camera sits on her for what seems like an eternity, while the others at the table talk around her. During this seemingly eternal long take, we see, and feel Otilia’s growing unease and tension as she tries to escape and return to Gabita’s side. The emotion of Mungiu’s film is in its starkness, filtered through the tenets of social realism. There are no embellishments, no dramatic music accompanying Otilia’s race to get rid of the aborted fetus. The real power lies in the interactions between camera and actor, as Otilia’s desperation permeates the screen with no superfluities to detract from her trawl through the ascetic streets.

Overall, the praise that 4 months has received is well deserved. This is a pertinent and promising benchmark for Romanian cinema. --

A frank and effecting portrayal of a not so distant past. 5/5