A beautiful and formally compelling work of art.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days(4 luni, 3 săptămîni și 2 zile)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Romania, Belgium · 2007
1h 54m
Director Cristian Mungiu
Starring Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean
Genre Drama
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In 1980s Romania, abortion and birth control are both criminal offences. College student Gabita is nearly five months pregnant, and in desperation she asks her roommate, Otilia, to help her arrange a black market abortion. They have 24 hours to make the ultimate choice.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Mungiu’s pacing is so sure, however, in its switching from loose to taut, and the concentration of his leading lady so unwavering, that the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels more like a thriller than a moody wallow.
Tense, kinetic, intelligent and real – as if Paul Greengrass had remade Vera Drake.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
The coup de grâce is especially graceless because everything we know is already visible in Marinca’s eyes. The actress is extraordinary.
Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in the last gasp of Nicolae Ceausescu’s iron-fisted regime, it’s no metaphor, but a sordidly visceral transaction conducted in the next best thing to a back alley.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
Relentlessly dark but expertly rendered, it shares its cinematographer and quality of aggrieved compassion with another recent Romanian art house hit, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu."
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
The film is dark, gloomy and without music, but it is also observant and highly suspenseful, with Mungiu using his often static camera to balance banal cruelty with simple generosity.
One of the strongest movies in recent years.
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