Review of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) by Kathleen P — 02 Dec 2008

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is a film about a woman who helps her friend obtain an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania. I wanted to watch the film after I heard so many complaints about it not having been nominated for the foreign language film for the Academy Awards.

So I watched it.

And I cringed the whole time.

This movie is realistic. I think, too realistic. This is not a fun movie, or happy, or anything like that. It made me want to throw up.

There are preparations that need to be made for the illegal abortion: obtaining a hotel room for a few days, getting materials to bargain and trade with, and meeting up the abortionist (who is a super sleazy bully that is very off-putting). The abortionist guy wants more money than what the pregnant girl and her friend have to offer, so he bullies them into saying things like they could go to jail and how hard it is to do this and so on, until both the pregnant girl and her friend agree to have sex with the asshole abortionist. The pregnant girl waits in the bathroom with the water running until her friend comes in with no underwear and hurriedly sprays her genitals with water. Then the pregnant girl goes into the room, and you can hear her crying. Then the asshole abortionist gets a wire and sticks it into the pregnant girl and leaves.

They go on their daily lives and that is also very disturbing. The friend leaves the now aborted and possibly non-pregnant girl to go to her boyfriend's mother's party, and her boyfriend is mad that she is late and forgot to bring flowers; it is very obvious that she is not fitting in at the party, and she is worried about her friend. There are long drawn out conversations, and the audience is made to feel uncomfortable. The pregnant girl lied to her friend about some details, the friend lies to her boyfriend, and everything just goes very wrong. What is more annoying is that the pregnant girl is very submissive and has an annoying quiet voice, and her friend who had to have sex with that gross abortionist is just pissed off all the time that her friend is so stupid and has stupid ideas. It keeps going, and there is even a scene where they take the aborted fetus and you actually see it.

I guess this is a really good movie because it is so harsh and real, and depicts a very real time and place. But did I enjoy it? No way. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy this kind of a movie.