Rent 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

Key film in European cinema - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days review by TE

Seeing this for a second time only reinforces appreciation of what a modern classic this film is.

The central scene in which the two young women haggle with the abortionist in a hotel room is simply rivetting.

There are echoes of Alan Clarke in the determined walking and dogged loyalty of Marinca's character. We only see her in extremes of difficulty, but she emerges as a credible and humane creation.

Not an easy watch, but true art needs to challenge in the way this movie does.

A tense & educational firm regarding living in communism, but not worthy of the massive praise - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days review by TB

Being born in 1988, I had no recollection or memory of any of the communist states/countries, so this film will mean more to others than it did to me.

But the ground is still very effectively laid early on. Otilia and Gabriela are 2 students living in Nicolae Ceaucescu's Romania. Their lives are strictly controlled, including access to money and needing to show identity cards wherever they go. Another element of Romanian life at the time was abortion being illegal, unless there were exceptional circumstances. Gabriela discovers to her horror that she is pregnant and asks Otilia to arrange an illegal abortion for her. The film then shows the desperation & fear that these two women individually go through in order to access this vital service. They make contact with a man known only as Mr Bebe, but from there they are exploited and due to the two friends not following the instructions given, the circumstances and things they are required to do drastically change.

For me, as I intimated earlier, the locations, setting and world-building are excellent. You really feel the oppression, which is almost suffocating, which these women and the Romanian population as a whole, had to tolerate for over 24 years just with Ceaucescu. I could not imagine the horror of it all.

But this film does have several massive issues, the biggest one being the characters, particularly Gabriela. She is absolutely vile; a petulant and extremely unlikeable woman. And this absolutely overrides any argument that is made about her being scared due to the oppressive regime that she is living in. Her behaviour not only potentially puts her in danger, but also her friend who is risking everything, literally everything, to help her. You may very well be scared, but the way you are behaving means that you risk taking not only yourself down, but your friend and both families as well.

And the flip side of that is that Otilia becomes an unrealistic character as well, the further the film goes on. There comes a point where any self-respecting person would just bail out, irrelevant of how close they are as a friend. When the woman you are risking everything for is acting like a combination of Veruca Salt & Angelica from Rugrats, it's time to get the hell out of there. The chemistry between the 2 is also unrealistic, in that they don't ever seem to be that close, and definitely not the level of friendship which would go even halfway towards the risks that Otilia faces.

The other big problem with the film is that it is far too long. There is also a scene involving a dinner party that goes on and on, stalling the narrative and killing the tension. When the film does finally jump back into life, it cannot recover, although to be fair I was starting to lose interest anyways. There is a further inexplicable piece of behaviour from Gabriela which is so extreme in its selfishness that any remaining sympathy I had was totally shattered.

I appreciate all this film does right, however for me there is such a bitter taste left after watching it that I cannot award it more than 3 stars, irrelevant of how much praise is heaped upon it.