4 mesi, 3 settimane, 2 giorni

A visceral and emotionally draining experience. Those are not typical superlatives one usually conjures while commenting on a movie, yet in this case I dare use such a characterization as a positive rendering of what I felt when watching this film.

The spartan and minimalist style of the movie only adds to its potency. Though many might find it jarring to sit through, I can only hope that people will have the patience and resolve to watch this brilliant example of movie making. If you invest your time and emotions in this one, you will not be disappointed.

The acting, camera work, cinematography are of the highest quality, especially given the budgetary restrictions and scarcity of available resources.This movie is yet more ample proof that one does not necessarily need a 200 million dollar budget to make a great film. Creativity and originality can add untold dimensions to any physical limitations and barriers.

All in all a great "little" movie about a forgotten slice of history, a little known place and, a time of horrifying brutality and oppression i.e. the so-called Golden Age (epoca de aur), Romania and Nicolae Ceausescu. This movie, "4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile/4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" is the first installment in a proposed trilogy entitled "Amintiri din epoca de aur/Tales From The Golden Age".

I'm looking forward to the next chapters...

It's 1987 Romania under the brutal Ceausescu communist dictatorship. Gabita (Laura Vasliu) is more than 4 Months pregnant and she's desperate for a highly illegal abortion. Her friend Otilia Mihartescu (Anamaria Marinca) searches all day setting up the abortion with Mr. Bebe. He starts complaining about them not following his instructions and demands more money which the girls don't have. Then he wants sex from both women as payment. After the abortion, Otilia has to go to her boyfriend's family dinner while Gabita waits in the hotel for the abortion to take hold.

This Romanian indie is done in long extended shots. Some of them are slow but mostly, they are very engaging. Some of them are harrowing. It takes its time to get to the point of the movie. The world in this film is a cold hard place. The style of the film only adds to its harshness. There is no pretty camera tricks or beautiful shots. It's a bleak film of a bleak world. The acting is natural and stark. The movie follows Anamaria Marinca. She is mostly unemotionally as she quietly suffers the indignity of Bebe. She shows that she has a good range and she's compelling as the lead. Laura Vasliu's role is a minor one where she can be more emotional. The movie is unrelentingly in its casual bleakness.

I'm in awe with 'realist' films, especially the one that actually works such as this one. In the climax track shot of walking through the city at night, how do they stage all the noise, the dog, the cars, the everything? It's crazy that i'm super impressed by how organic and realistic it is. Which is odd, because usually i go to movies to see how clever a filmmaker can be with twisting reality. But this was clearly magic to have been able to present a simple act (walking) in a simple composition (face dead center), with all of the familiar elements of nighttime in the city, and brought it all together to heighten the experience of this girl carrying what it seems like, all the worry in the world. It brought me back an almost childish/immediate feeling of being afraid walking alone at night, but of course compared to film, i've never walked alone at night with that much at stake.

But this is where the movie is most successful, the film presents you with people living in a type of harsh system that i can't imagine here living in the states. But the feelings and emotions that are portrayed are universal, the feeling of being young and afraid, feeling of sneaking behind the law, risking something for your friend , feeling of regret. And in this film the moral compass is clear, they know the system is unjust and they do things out of love and care for one another.

But for us here in the states, where government and law has seeped itself into everything, where we don't sometimes realized our own systematic oppression, how much of our sense of right/wrong is driven by government and the law? how much of it is actually driven by love and passion for real people?

Winner of last years Palme d'Or this Romanian film set in the eighties and is a cross between Richard Linklater's 2001 film 'Tape', in that the majority of the action takes place in one room between three central characters and Mike Leigh's 2004 film 'Vera Drake' in that its central theme is illegal abortion. It is a film about the human condition, trust, betrayal, the extremes people have to go to sometimes and the consequences that follow certain actions. It has two great performances from the college roommates Otilia and Gabita from their introduction to us as they make plans for a trip through to the grizzly outcome that concludes the film. The setting is grim and the bleached out film stock adds to the jittery camera work and gives an uneasy feeling throughout, instantly you are transported to a time where people barter with tic tacs, cigarettes and powdered milk and the promise of sugar is a dream to many and a reality to only a few. Gabita's predicament and subsequent journey both physically and mentally are what drives the film but its shown mainly through the eyes of her friend and roommate Otilia who as well as making and carrying out the arrangements has to make some startling sacrifices and ones that she will have memory of forever, as will you the audience long after the film has finished. Although not an easy watch and considering the subject matter not something you can say you 'enjoyed' it is none the less a brilliant piece of film-making, subtle and emotive with very real character studies. A brutal in your face look at a bleak time in history, how a leader destroyed the economy of a country and what that did to everyday life and a reminder of how far behind the rest of us Eastern Europe was before the fall of the Iron curtain and particularly Romania before the Revolution of 1989.

Cristian Mungiu's film is the most successful in what is called the Romanian Cinama New Wave, although it's not the very best in my opinion. I liked more 'The Death of Dante Lazarescu', and even 'California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit') had better chances from start. And yet '4-3-2' succeeded better than other because it vibrates different chords in the viewers souls and on different planes. Women will resonate with the story of the imposed tragedy at a personal and national level resulted from the anti-abortion policies in Communist Romania, and one cannot say it's only a pro-choice movie, it's a real indictment. If one is interested in recent European history he may see the results of what communist propaganda named the Golden Age, an apocalyptic landscape of cold, dark and loneliness. If you are Romanian and lived these times you may feel you returned in time and the end of the movie may seem the awakening from a recurring nightmare.

And if you are a fan of good cinema you will admire the virtuosity of a director who learned perfectly the lessons of Jim Jarmusch and DOGMA and transfered them in the East European space. You need the hand of a master to create those those long shots in which every detail is in place, camera, actors, lights and voices. I see from time to time older Romanian movies where I observe not that much the lack of technical means in the 70s or 80s, but more the lack of capacity of the directors to compensate this disadvantages with simplicity of concept and turn them into quality as other directors from less privileged schools of cinema have done. Well, the last films of directors like Mungiu or the late Nemescu I could see a jump ahead in quality of expression that takes many generations for other film schools.

There are many memorable scenes in this film. One of them describes a family dinner, where the principal character, a student from a lesser means family arrives invited by her boyfriend. It's his mother's birthday, and they have as guests two couples of friends from the local mid-upper class. The scene is a nine minute shot with fixed camera, focusing on four characters sited at the head of the table, with a few others voices being heard from out of the screen space. She is in the middle, and obliged to listen and participate, but she wants to be some other place, near her friend who just underwent an illegal abortion. Every minute may be fatal for the life of her friend. The dialog is not meaningless, it is a short novella on its own about the art of compromise necessary for survival in a dictatorship. And yet, she is there and is not there - all looks like a Da Vinci painting, with Jesus sited among the apostles, but already in a different spiritual reality. Magnificent to follow as its character has its own life, its like a concatenation of first plans one near the other.

In another memorable scene Otilia runs in the night to get rid of the aborted child. It's one of these long and cold nights into which Romania was plunged at these times because of electricity savings. She runs on the streets scared, scared not that much by the shades of the night but by the proof of the 'crime' she is carrying and which can incriminate her for many years of jail if she is caught. Best horror scene of the year in my view.

Anamaria Marinca is superb in the role of Otilia. No mannerism, no melodrama, no make-up - the actress is just living the character of a girl ready to sacrifice everything to help her naive and maybe a little dumb friend. It is by this humanity of the simple people that dictatorship can be survived at the human level the film seems to say.

'4-3-2' is a candidate for the best foreign film at the Oscars, but I am afraid it will not get the prize. The film starts slowly and needs patience to get the sense, and many jurors may not get over the first third. The interest for East-European cinema is decreasing, it's not such a new thing any longer, and Romanian cinema is little known out of Europe. Anyway, Oscar or not, this film is simply good, and it demonstrates that the Romanian cinema passed the period of transition and it's time for maturity. It's now even harder, as Romanian directors will need to find the inspiration to make films that do not look that much into the past but still can catch the interest of the local and international audiences. It will be interesting to follow.