4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Until fairly recently, Romanian cinema was scarcely a presence on the international circuit. How then has the former eastern bloc country come to produce a crop of such standout successes in the last five or ten years? I don’t suppose there is one easy answer to this. Be that as it may, Romania started making ripples at festivals around the world in the early years of the new millenium. And suddenly everyone was talking about the ‘New Wave’ in Romanian cinema. This year, the cinema’s latest triumphs have included a Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and the Prix Un Certain Regard, a posthumous award to the director of California Dreamin’, who died so tragically in the summer of 2006. Turning out so many good films in such a short time has been the work of a bunch of young directors, all aged between 30 and 40, who in the process have propelled Romania to the premier league of European cinema. It could be argued that there is a certain overlap in the cinematic vision of these directors. For its part, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days epitomizes an aesthetic choice manifest in most of the recent films: minimalism. Director Cristian Mungiu is endlessly economic in his use of camera, editing and light; he presents the audience with a story stripped naked – a story of two girls, one of them pregnant and wanting a abortion, set over of a single day. No detail is superfluous; nor is there even a hint of embellishment in the film. We learn from the synopsis that it takes place two years before the 1989 demise of the Ceausescu regime. Yet there is no television image to ram home the atmosphere of the period, nor any mention of Ceausescu’s name. For all that, as the camera trails after the protagonists, the sense of gloom it engenders is palpable. It also pivots deftly from place to place when called for or stands stock still, as in the masterfully contrived dinner party scene… Indeed, ‘432’ owes its potency in large part to the camera, which drifts around the locations like a kinoeye, relaying everything it sees exactly as it sees it.