Director: Cristian Mungiu (Occident)
Writer: Cristian Mungiu
Producers: Cristian Mungiu , Oleg Mutu
Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Vlad Ivanov, Laura Vasiliu, Alexandru Potoceanu
MPAA Rating: NR
Running time: 113 min
You may feel the need to have a good, hot shower (or two) at the conclusion of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. The movie is gritty, dark, cold and depressing. But sitting above all that is the fact that it’s undeniably compelling; despite its repugnant subject matter.
Taking place in communist Romania in 1987, we start our story in a student dormitory where we follow a young lady named Otilia as she goes about morning business. Looking for friends to talk to, buying some cigarettes and other essentials. We can tell something is going on between her and her flat mate, Gabita, as if they are planning something important; though we’re not quite sure what. We follow Otilia throughout the morning: meeting her boyfriend, gathering some money, stopping at a hotel, etc; still obviously preparing for something important and secretive. Eventually she meets up with a stranger in a public place, whom she brings back to Gabita at the hotel. Here is where we finally learn that an illegal abortion is about to be performed. As little problems that have arisen throughout the day grow more and more important and more and more impactful, we can see that this entire situation is a time bomb waiting to go off. Things quickly begin to spiral downward and out of control and Otilia must make decisions that will change the way she views the world, her friends and most importantly herself, forever.
While I try not to draw too many comparisons with other films in my written reviews, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Gus Van Sant’s high school drama, Elephant. While not as literally explosive as Elephant ends up being, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days appears to draw some inspiration from Mr. Van Sant as it spends quite a bit of its running time with seemingly mundane details and lengthy shots of characters going about normal, everyday activities; or lengthy, nearly silent shots of characters while in not such a mundane circumstance. The difference between the two films however, would be that while Elephant slowly builds nothing into cataclysm by the end, 4, 3, 2 has several moments interspersed throughout that are cringingly gripping and even interesting and sometimes sickening and degrading.
The director really does a fantastic job of getting us to sympathize with Otilia after the choices and sacrifices she makes for herself and her friend. We may not be so sympathetic at the time; but it’s later, when we’re forced to sit and think about what has happened that we really feel the sting of emotion. Whether it be a lengthy (10 minutes) happy birthday dinner party in which we get a long unbroken shot of Otilia as she sits at a dinner table full of joyous conversationalists or Otilia just sitting on a chair loooking at the floor as she contemplates and questions her friend on what has happened, we have no choice but to look into Otilia’s eyes and in this way, we’re very forcefully thrust into her shoes and we want nothing more than to be somewhere else.
All of the relationships in the film are oil-in-water to the point of which the only discernible thing the film has to say (besides the obvious – “shooting innocent children is unforgivable”) is that nobody has a good time in a tourist trap. The film likes its comedy as black as pitch considering that it tries to mix kid-shooting, extremely politically incorrect humour and overall cruelty. And it honest-to-god wants to you like these characters. Going back to Colin Farrell for a moment, he certainly goes as far as he can to doing so, yet you can only like him in a somewhat condescending sort of way, because really he is coasting on immaturity, casual stupidity and charm (more than one would-be girlfriend is suckered in by those qualities, as the audience will likely be here, although afterwards, there is nothing really to hold onto). Undoubtedly a movie star, he plays the Irish equivalent of any number of 
