Review by John Packman.

Romanian cinema seems to be undergoing a renaissance of sorts, what with the critical success of films like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 12:08 East of Bucharest. Cristian Mungiu's film 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is no exception, having met near-universal accolades and recently winning the prestigious Palme D'Or at Cannes. I'm happy to report that the hype is entirely deserved. 4 Months is an extraordinarily bleak portrait of the tail end of the Caecescu era in Romania that focuses on a young woman's attempt to procure a dangerous - and illegal - abortion. The world of this young woman, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), and her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), is at once disorientingly foreign and strangely familiar; nearly every transaction is done on the black market, and the weight of Communism still hangs over the lives of all present, but the two women are so like you or me that their wrong turns are rendered all the more painful.

Mungiu's direction and writing is nearly flawless; every exchange and every action is suffused with subtext while never seeming didactic or unnatural, and he maintains a singular focus on Otilia, the film's true protagonist. Marinca deserves an equal amount of credit for essentially carrying the film; she is rarely (if ever) offscreen, and she plays Otilia as such a willfully, intrinsically good force that our sympathies are easily maintained despite the character's cold edge. It's one of the best performances of the year, somehow giving us a fully-rounded, recognizable human being without once slipping into affectation or histrionics. So much ink has been spilled over 4 Months that I'm not sure I have anything original to add, but I can say that this is an honest and quietly devastating film that made me feel like I had been shaken roughly by the shoulders for two hours, and that's not something I can say very often.

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Cristian Mungiu | Romania | 2007 | 113min

Sun. Sept. 30 | 10:00am | Empire Granville Theatre
Mon. Oct. 8 | 7:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre
Thur. Oct. 11 | 4:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre