4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

This is a truly exceptional movie. It got a 97 at Metacritic, an almost unprecedented score. It is set in the 1980s, in the Bucharest of the Ceausescus, two of the more bizarre psychopaths ever to run a communist worker’s paradise. Abortion is illegal, and two friends set out to get one done. Gabita is the pregnant one, and she is completely inept and clueless, one of those women, I assume, who has gotten by in life only because she can beguile men to do things for her. She relies on her friend, Otilia, to handle all the yucky parts except the actual expelling of the fetus itself. It is an unblinking chronicle of 24 hours, during which we see just how degrading, humiliating, and dangerous a back-alley abortion can be. Nothing is candy-coated here. Abortion is never any fun, but when it’s legal at least it can be clean, secure, and between you and your doctor. There’s little danger, except maybe from a murderous pro-life fanatic outside the clinic. You don’t have to decide whether to flush the fetus down the toilet or dump it in a trash can. Here, the abortionist is furtive and afraid. At first, I thought he was just being reasonable, browbeating these women with the knowledge that, if caught, it’s ten years in prison for them all. After all, Gabita has almost succeeded in screwing up everything; without Otilia there to straighten things out, the game would be off. But it soon become clear that the man sadistically enjoys the power he holds over them, and is willing to exercise it in the most unspeakable terms. Again, it is Otilia who pays the price. (My one problem with the movie is understanding why Otilia doesn’t just throw up her hands walk out on the brainless Gabita. I suspect the bond between two female friends over a thing like this transcends the ability of a male to really understand it. But the price Otilia pays to keep the loathsome abortionist on the job is a terrible one.) You expect the absolute worst from a story like this. You expect Gabita in a pool of blood in the bathroom … and I won’t tell you how it comes out, except to say that it’s not that simple. The movie gets off to a slow start, but soon mesmerizes. There are long takes with a static camera, long pauses just to watch Otilia’s face, her reactions to things. The actress who plays her, Anamaria Marinca, is very, very good. Here, she is drab, as colorless as communist Romania. But I looked her up and see that she has a small part in Coppola‘s Youth Without Youth, and in the pictures from the premiere she is gorgeous! I’d never have known. She’s got supporting roles in some upcoming American movies that sound interesting, including one directed by Julie Delpy, with co-stars like William Hurt and Liam Neeson, so I’m assuming she speaks English. She could go far in Hollywood.