So, I try to start these write-ups with some kind of personal anecdote or something about the filmmakers or the genre it represents or something, but then I got to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and wow. Oh, it’s a very good film, but this one was probably far more relevant than I thought it would be. This film was one that was new to me, and my initial thoughts were I wasn’t sure I had ever seen a film from Eastern Europe, let alone Romania. Then it turned out to be about two young women in 1987’s Romania trying to get one an illegal abortion. I try not to be overtly political in these write-ups due to the nature of where I work. But seeing a film like this while multiple states in the United States seem to be trying to make abortion illegal as quickly as possible since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade, I am looking at the possibility that large portions of the United States will see abortion be as legal as it was in 1980s Romania.
And that is all I am going to say about that.
It’s 1987, and university roommates and friends Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Găbița (Laura Vasiliu) are planning on going on some sort of trip. From the start, it’s clear that Otilia is the more pragmatic and practical of the two as she spends much of the early scenes of the film walking around the dorms, their university campus, and the town they live in making arrangements, getting money, and arranging for a hotel room. Găbița for one reason or another just doesn’t seem capable of doing that sort of stuff. But it turns out Găbița has a good reason for that: she’s pregnant, not really in any position to be a mother, and needs an abortion. She’s not showing yet and claims she’s at most three months pregnant. This is near the end of Ceaușescu’s reign, and abortion is illegal, punishable by up to a decade in prison. And considering how useful Găbița seems to be, this is really Otilia’s film.
That’s a fairly accurate assessment. Otilia is the lead character. She doesn’t need the abortion. Găbița does, but Găbița strikes me as somewhat useless during this whole incident. She’s lying about how long she’s been pregnant, and while Otilia isn’t the one who needs the abortion, she is the one who will do whatever is necessary to make sure Găbița is taken care of. That means talking to sketchy back alley abortionist Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), making new hotel reservations when the original one (the one Bebe insisted on) is booked solid, and getting money from her boyfriend Adi (Alexandru Potocean) while trying to hide why. That more than anything else is what Otilia is up to: as I said above, Găbița is kinda useless during all this, mostly just looking worried and not quite focusing on what she should be, more worried about whether she should take her class notes with her for the two days she will need to recover than the actual steps needed to not only get the abortion but also to keep it a secret.
That general uselessness is the key to the title. Bebe knows the procedure changes the further along the pregnancy is, to say nothing of his legal risk. Neither of the young women has had to get a abortion before, and they don’t have the financial means to pay Bebe for the termination of a four month pregnancy. Well, not with money anyway. Bebe is a sketchy character, so naturally, he will take sex with both girls in lieu of money, or at least in lieu of the sort of money he would normally demand, and yes, both women acquiesce to his demands, going one at a time, and the scene is one of the rare moments when the camera follows Găbița instead of Otilia as she, looking guilty and nervous, waits in the next room while Otilia goes first.
This, as it turns out, is just one of the many humiliations that Otilia goes through. Adi had more or less guilted her into coming over to his parents’ home for his mother’s birthday. Otilia hadn’t met Adi’s mother yet, but the older woman had a special desert just for Otilia. Otilia has time to slip out after Găbița’s abortion, knowing her friend must stay completely immobile until the fetus comes out. What Otilia intended as a quick-in-and-out goes much longer as Adi’s older relatives, mostly doctors of a more conservative nature, carry on a banal conversation over dinner that Otilia would rather not listen to even under the best of circumstances. Said conversation is fairly critical of the younger generations, and they seem like the sort that would disapprove of Otilia’s actions as it is, but factor in the other, primary reason why Otilia wants to get the hell out of there, and the silent expression on Marinca’s face goes beyond what could be boredom into impatience and resentment towards, well, maybe everybody she’s had to deal with in the past 24 hours or so.
That dinner is followed by an argument with Adi over abortion when she privately tells him what happened, the fact Otilia has to dispose of the fetus when she returns to the hotel, and finally coming back to find Găbița missing from the room and enjoying a meal in the hotel’s restaurant. To go through all this, Otilia had to be one hell of a good friend.
A film like this, showing the lengths women will go to in order to have an abortion when they are legally barred from doing so, to say nothing of how much this whole experience puts on Otilia (and she’s not even the pregnant one), and even considering how much pretty much every place in the film looks rundown, with stray dogs wandering everywhere and every wall looking like it could use a coat of paint, it doesn’t surprise me much when Otilia, tired of the hassle, Găbița’s lies and general inability to take care of herself, and every other thing that has gone wrong, basically lets it be known to her friend that she doesn’t ever want to talk about this experience ever again. Who can blame her?
Now, I won’t claim to know how legal abortion is in Romania today, or even in 2007 when it was filmed, 20 years after the time it was set in. What I suspect is a film like this is made as something of a warning: women will do what it takes to get something like this done no matter how illegal it might be. This is a powerful film that accomplishes what it needs to without much in the way of histrionics but limits itself to just quiet facial expressions as the women navigate the steps needed for Găbița to have a procedure that, I am guessing, the filmmakers would think she should be allowed to have but can’t in her time and place. Maybe that doesn’t need tears. Maybe it just needs a woman to be willing to stress herself out for a friend, encounter indignity upon indignity, and then decide it’s not something she wants to talk about anymore. That probably says more than a thousand tears.
NEXT: I think the next one may be the first one I have reviewed for my own blog and not for Gabbing Geek. Be back soon for 1989’s biopic My Left Foot.
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