4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days - Preview and awards
Preview by Jack Foley
A ROMANIAN film about illegal abortion that proved to be one of the hits of the London Film Festival and which has already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes has landed another top prize at The 18th Stockholm International Film Festival.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by director Christian Mungiu received the Bronze Horse award for best film and earned one of its stars, Anamaria Marinca, the festival’s Best Actress award.
The film unfolds over one long night in 1980s Romania and follows of two young women living in an all-female dorm.
Vague Gabita is pregnant and wants an illegal termination but she has been dilatory about arrangements with the criminal abortionist.
When her staunch friend and room mate Otilia (played by Marinca) tries to straighten things out she’s made to pay her own price to make sure it happens.
Nick James, writing for the London Film Festival programme, said of the film: “Screen realism rarely achieves such a vivid texture of a country and a time as this excruciatingly tense drama, the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes…
“Nearly every scene is a harrowing standout, but the one in which Otilia is obliged to attend her boyfriend’s parents’ dinner party while Gabita is in a hotel waiting for the treatment to take effect, is particularly brilliant. Director Cristian Mungiu’s superb arthouse nail-biter is convincing in every way, especially in the piercing performance of Anamaria Marinca as Otilia.”
The jury in Stockhold passed similar comments when arriving at their decision to award the film the Bronze Horse. Its panel stated: ““We forget we are watching a ‘performance’ and instead experience, moment by devastating moment, the brutal events of this day in the life of Otilia.”
They added: “[The film] expresses the impact of societal repression on its characters with honesty and devastating humanity.”
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is an incredible film experience – tough, harrowing and absolutely compelling. It opens in UK cinemas on January 11, 2008.