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The Criterion Channel Presents: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

Very little happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days -the movie that is. And what does happen is taken very mildly -the most significant developments to its plot take place off-screen, and the characters’ emotions even around harsh themes are subdued. And yet the film has a power to it, akin to something like Jeanne Dielman -the great icon of minimalist cinema- because it is perfectly in tune with the sensitivity of its subject, especially in Romania in the 1980s.
Cristian Mungiu was not the first filmmaker to apply this kind of quiet and discreet tone to a film about abortion in a time and place where that form of medical care was illegal. Another movie it has a lot in common with is Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake from 2004. But Mungiu’s 2007 film, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year, is undoubtedly more haunting -because it speaks not only to abortion, but the broader hostilities facing vulnerable young women in that time and place.
It is 1987 in a small Romanian town, and two college roommates are faced with a dilemma. Găbita (Laura Vasilu) needs an abortion -though it is highly illegal in the country. So she and Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) arrange to meet a Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) -recommended through a friend- who can perform it for them. Otilia goes to the trouble of procuring money, booking a hotel room and meeting with Bebe, only for it to be discovered when everything is set that Găbita is further along in her pregnancy than she claimed, resulting in complications.
The movie’s colour scheme is highly desaturated and its cinematography is mellow, which combined with the stale utilitarian architecture makes for a very intentionally miserable portrait of its world. Repression is palpable in the air and in the very way that the women carry themselves through their secretive endeavour -cautious and nervous. The film’s point-of-view is with Otilia, and Marinca plays the gravity of her actions incredibly well. She is the one organizing much of this for her friend, and though considerably anxious she is committed to it, she makes sacrifices. And so it does sting that  Găbita lied to her.
The title of course refers to how far along Găbita is, much later in a term than abortions are typically performed. And because the fetus is more developed, they all risk a murder charge by the state if found out. If something goes wrong, Bebe insists, they can’t even call for an ambulance without the likelihood it would lead to their arrests. In their drab hotel room, where a lot of the film is set, the three have very blunt conversations about this. While the severe stakes are certainly believable though, the tone set by Bebe in laying them out is very telling. He refutes them at each turn, aggressively, and as he increases his price beyond what they can afford, he preys on their desperation -and of course it turns to abuse. When he extorts sex out of them both it is hardly surprising, the film’s most stark and violent metaphor for the effects of a vicious patriarchy. Mungiu keeps it obscured from the vantage of the bathroom, where one waits for the other to finish before going themselves, and a naked Otilia not quite keeping her composure in the bathtub -yet this renders the act more visceral. And of course once Bebe has gotten what he wanted he performs the procedure very quickly and easily, leaving the girls alone with instructions on how to dispose of the fetus, and with a lot of disillusionment over their trust of him -and Otilia in particular, with some resentment towards Găbita.
But that friendship is strong and important, especially when Otilia is confronted with the harshness of other figures in her life. She leaves her friend for a time to fulfil an obligation for boyfriend Adi’s (Alexandru Potocean) family party. But there is a bitter alienation there, a dawning realization (compounded by some passive aggression towards her) that these people are not on her side -they inhabit an ignorant world. And when she brings up with Adi the notion of her hypothetically being pregnant, he is quite opposed to the idea of an abortion. Not subtly, this conversation takes place in a bedroom where children occasionally wander through.
The stress and tension of all this is well played by Mungiu, even in a movie with long stretches of monotony. And Otilia is beset by a wealth of small inconveniences just to set up the circumstances -issues with booking the hotel room, arranging the money- encountering the rudeness of people in authority and the frustration that the needs of a young woman inform this.
The movie is set in the 1980s, but there is very little iconography to that fact -it looks like it could be any time, which I suspect is intentional. Mungiu does well to keep the most harrowing aspects of the story off-screen -the expulsion of the fetus is another; but their reality is still deeply tangible. At the end, Otilia and Găbita sit in a restaurant and swear never to talk about this again -for their own safety and perhaps for their mental health. Yet it is clear the trauma of what they went through and why they were put through it will be abiding. It is a tragic end. But at least they have each other.

Criterion Recommendation: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)
I may have stressed before, Criterion does not have enough Canadian films, but it also doesn’t have enough Indigenous films. Rhymes for Young Ghouls accounts for both. A distinct and riveting film, set on a Mi’kmaq reservation in the 1970s not far from a residential school, it deals harshly in themes of abuse, collective trauma, drugs, and poverty, as it follows a teenage girl forced by circumstance into the local drug trade, and her precarious efforts to avoid torture via the residential school system; as well as her escape and revenge after she is betrayed and sent there. Led by a powerful landmark performance of youthful grit and determination from Devery Jacobs and directed by the late Jeff Barnaby, the film offers potent insight into a period of Native history often ignored or else told by colonizers. It emphasizes well the multi-faceted systems of oppression, which also include incarceration and the flooding of drugs into communities, that have hurt reservations for decades. Yet it is also a thrilling film, artfully made with cultural punk aesthetics and a vivid sense of its own gravity. An acclaimed and beloved work of Indigenous filmmaking, a Criterion release would be quite appropriate.

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