- Sat 05 July, 7 & 9 pm -
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS

Since it caused a sensation at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palm d’Or for Best Film, the Romanian film 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS has been impressing critics, winning prizes, and keeping audiences on the edge of their seats. 30 prominent film critics put this movie on their ‘10 Best Films of 2007′ list.

Hanoi Cinematheque is pleased to present this unusual and celebrated film for one night only.

Members only.

A surprising and gripping movie. The tale is so compelling that it seduces viewers. They simply must know, as the plot coils tighter around the characters, what happens next.
— Richard Corliss, Time Magazine.

During the final days of communism in Romania, two college roommates, Otilia and Gabita, are busy preparing for a night away. But rather than planning for a holiday, they are preparing for Gabita’s illegal abortion and unwittingly, both find themselves burrowing deep down a rabbit hole of unexpected revelations. Transpiring over the course of a single day, Cristian Mungiu’s poignant and disturbing film is a masterwork of modern filmmaking.

Members only. For reservations, e-mail or phone 936 2648 after 13:00 daily.

FILM NOTES

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
2008 Directed by Cristian Mungiu 113 minutes
Romanian with English subtitles. No Vietnamese translation.

Winner of Palme d’OR, Best Film: Cannes Film Festival 2007
Winner, Best Director and Best Film: European Film Awards, 2008
Winner, Best Foreign Language Film: Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, 2008
Winner, Best Foreign Language Film: Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, 2008

From review by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times:

This is a powerful film and a stark visual accomplishment. The time is the late 1980s. Romania still cringes under the brainless rule of Ceausescu. In Cristian Mungiu’s 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, Gabita desires an abortion, which was then illegal, not for moral reasons, but because Ceausescu wanted more subjects to rule. She turns in desperation to her roommate Otilia, who agrees to help her, and does. Helps her so much, indeed, she does everything but have the abortion herself. In a period of 24 hours, we follow the two friends in a journey of frustration, stupidity, duplicity, cruelty and desperation, set against a background of a nation where if it weren’t for the black market, there’d be no market at all.

The movie deliberately levels an unblinking gaze at its subjects. There are no fancy shots, no effects, no quick cuts, and Mungiu and his cinematographer, Oleg Mutu, adhere to a rule of one shot per scene. That makes camera placement and movement crucial, and suggests that every shot has been carefully prepared. Even shots where the ostensible subject of the action is half-visible, or not seen at all, serve a purpose, by insisting on the context and the frame. Visuals are everything here; the film has no music, only words or silences.

Filmmakers in countries of the former Soviet bloc have been using their new freedom to tell at last the stories they couldn’t tell then. THE LIVES OF OTHERS, for example, was about the East German secret police. And in Romania, the era has inspired a group of powerful films, including MR. LAZARESCU and 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST and 4 MONTHS, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

The film has inspired many words about how it reflects Romanian society, but obtaining an illegal abortion was much the same in this country until some years ago, and also in Britain, as we saw in Leigh’s VERA DRAKE. The fascination of the film comes not so much from the experiences the friends have, however unspeakable, but in who they are, and how they behave and relate. Anamaria Marinca gives a masterful performance as Otilia, but don’t let the weaknesses of Gabita blind you to the brilliance of Laura Vasiliu’s acting. These are two of the more plausible characters I’ve seen in a while.

From review by Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (London):

Cristian Mungiu’s film is a nightmare of social-realist suspense, a jewel of what it is now considered the Romanian new wave. In more general terms, it is part of that emerging 21st-century phenomenon, ordeal cinema: a cinema that with great formal technique makes you live through a horrendous experience in what seems like real time. As a drama, it is superbly observed and telling in every subtle detail; yet it is also simply as exciting, in its stomach-turning way, as any thriller.

Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasilu play Otilia and Gabriela, two students in their early 20s who share a tatty dorm in a provincial Romanian town. Otilia is relatively shrewd and worldly wise with a steady boyfriend; poor Gabriela, by contrast, is clueless, spacey, prone to getting things wrong.

The 39-year-old Mungiu has created a masterpiece of intimate desperation with a succession of brilliantly created and controlled scenes; it fully deserved its Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes film festival. On Marinca’s face is a spiritual devastation or incineration. It was from wretchedness and rage such as this that bred the uprising that changed Romania and the world.