4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 3.0
Unspeakably grim picture that takes place during the last of the Ceauºescu years in Romania, where abortion was illegal and freedom was extremely limited, and Polytechnics student Anamaria Marinca helps pregnant friend Laura Vasiliu secure a hotel room and contact an abortionist to perform the procedure (played with a good degree of odiousness by Vlad Ivanov). Beneath the surface misery about life in a Communist regime - and statement about the need for personal freedoms - there's another layer about the dynamics of friendship: Marinca, the entire movie, fights an uphill battle for her friend, going so far as to borrow money, prostitute herself, dispose of the fetus and risk imprisonment for a peer without so much as a thank you in return. Sometimes, friendship (or even a sexual relationship) can be like that, with one person fully committing him/herself and the other lying there, waiting to be helped. In the entire movie, there's only one anonymous person who actually gives Marinca something, expecting nothing in return: the man on the bus who hands her the spare ticket when she realizes she doesn't have one. Fittingly, she doesn't say thank you to him, either.
