Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Category: IIB (Romanian)
It speaks volumes about the power of 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days that the film's most distressing scene is neither one featuring sexual violence nor the political repression in Romania in the late 1980s, the period in which the film is set. Instead, its most disturbing moment is in a dining room filled with the petty griping of ageing, self-proclaimed intellectuals.
Amid the cacophony sits Otilia (Anamaria Marinca, above centre), filled with the pain and rage resulting from her harrowing experience with an abortionist just an hour earlier. She is forced to repress all those emotions in the presence of her elders, enduring trivial gripes from the old-timers at the table, including the odd acerbic reproach thrown her way. Shot like a tableau with an unmoving camera, the scene captures the film's emotional essence.
Otilia's suffering and the guests' cynicism reveals two sides of how the human spirit collapses in on itself in the face of outside repression.