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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
IFC First Take

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 97 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.3 out of 10
based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 76 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, and Alexandru Potocean

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 making arrangements for Gabita's illegal abortion and unwittingly, both find themselves burrowing deep down a rabbit hole of unexpected revelations. (IFC Entertainment)


GENRE(S): Drama  
WRITTEN BY: Cristian Mungiu  
DIRECTED BY: Cristian Mungiu  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: January 23, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 113 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Romania 
LANGUAGE(S): Romanian / English 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Empire Damon Wise
Tense, kinetic, intelligent and real – as if Paul Greengrass had remade Vera Drake.
Read Full Review
100
Time Richard Corliss
One of the strongest movies in recent years.
Read Full Review
100
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing.
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100
Variety Jay Weissberg
Pitch perfect and brilliantly acted, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a stunning achievement, helmed with a purity and honesty that captures not just the illegal abortion story at its core but the constant, unremarked negotiations necessary for survival in the final days of the Soviet bloc.
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100
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in the last gasp of Nicolae Ceausescu’s iron-fisted regime, it’s no metaphor, but a sordidly visceral transaction conducted in the next best thing to a back alley.
Read Full Review
100
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Nothing good happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the riveting, horrifying chronicle of an illegal abortion performed in 1987 when Ceauescu's dictatorial hand still gripped Romania's throat. And yet no lover of greatness in filmmaking will want to look away from one of the very best movies of 2007.
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100
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
It’s a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement.
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100
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
4 Months unfolds like one of those street-level Dardenne brothers movies (Rosetta, L'Enfant).
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100
Premiere Glenn Kenny
A remarkably engrossing and thoughtful picture, beautifully rendered in an artful mode of realism.
Read Full Review
100
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film.
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100
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
This year’s foreign language Oscar scandal – there is always at least one – is the snub of director Cristian Mungiu’s disturbing, masterful realist drama following two college roommates as they carry out plans for one’s black market abortion in Communist Romania.
Read Full Review
100
TV Guide Ken Fox
The film is bold stroke that hopes to push Romanian society forward by staring into the dismal failures of its recent past.
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100
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Despite their terrible ordeal these women are heroes, not victims. As Mungiu makes clear in the casual, brilliant final scene of this amazing movie, heroes persevere.
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100
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
First, this movie should be enjoyed. Later, marveled at. And then, once the excitement has faded, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days really should be studied, because director Cristian Mungiu creates scenes unlike any ever filmed.
100
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The New Wave of Romanian cinema is the most exciting in the world right now. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is its latest masterpiece.
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100
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu confirms the Romanian cinema renaissance while creating a paradoxical marvel: a bleak tale of illegal abortion that powerfully affirms one's faith in people.
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100
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The result is a mixture of unified atmosphere and lived-in character study, and while Vasiliu’s role is not as indelible as that of her co-stars, Marinca’s Otilia and Ivanov’s steely abortionist are just about perfect.
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100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This is a powerful film and a stark visual accomplishment, but no thanks to Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). The driving character is her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who does all the heavy lifting.
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100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.
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100
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
In a truly great movie the form becomes indistinguishable from the story, and that’s certainly the case here.
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100
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster.
Read Full Review
100
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
You just don't expect Hollywood to produce a masterwork so early in the new year. And it hasn't. This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you.
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100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Without a single gunshot (and just one flick of a switchblade), it turns into an existential suspense film with the highest stakes imaginable: the survival of the human spirit.
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100
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.
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90
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Anamaria Marinca delivers an utterly transfixing performance as Otilia, a young woman who helps a friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist Ceausescu regime.
Read Full Review
90
New York Magazine David Edelstein
The coup de grâce is especially graceless because everything we know is already visible in Marinca’s eyes. The actress is extraordinary.
Read Full Review
90
Slate Dana Stevens
A beautiful and formally compelling work of art.
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88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Relentlessly dark but expertly rendered, it shares its cinematographer and quality of aggrieved compassion with another recent Romanian art house hit, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu."
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88
USA Today Claudia Puig
Depressing and gut-wrenching, but always powerful and gripping.
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88
New York Post V.A. Musetto
It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't.
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88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Despite being slow and deliberate, it is often compelling and occasionally riveting. As "The Lives of Others" was in 2007, this is the first memorable movie of 2008.
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83
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
A grueling film in both technique and subject matter.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Rick Kisonak
This is a tale of friendship, corruption, betrayal and desperation masterfully told without an ounce of filmmaking flash and with an unflinching commitment to realism.
Read Full Review
80
The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
The film is dark, gloomy and without music, but it is also observant and highly suspenseful, with Mungiu using his often static camera to balance banal cruelty with simple generosity.
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80
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Mungiu’s pacing is so sure, however, in its switching from loose to taut, and the concentration of his leading lady so unwavering, that the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels more like a thriller than a moody wallow.
Read Full Review
78
Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
A curious filmgoing experience: Virtuosic, assured, and possessed of undeniable aesthetic force, it’s also hard not to turn away from.
Read Full Review
63
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It makes "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "12:08 East of Bucharest," the last glum Romanian movies about life under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, seem merry.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 76 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Adrian P. gave it a5:
Clearly, the reason that this film has such a high score from the critics is that it is a film made to entrance, to shock,and addressed directly to the liberal self reproach of the west world, and from the users because it receives massive votes from the Romanians, who are in a state that says every success outside the borders will uplift the image of our country. The film was very good technically, but if you analyze it a little bit it has NOTHING in stake, no ethical weight, no character deep study(mr. Bebe only seems real because he talks real but his actions are completely cartoonish and unmotivated) , and the girls are so common, so devoid of any ethical sense that i struggle to care for any of them. Plus, itțs more likely a short or a medium length movie, made a feature film by some pointless scenes.

Trevor F. gave it a9:
I've only one complaint. The movie is too slow to be a thriller, which is what it is marketed as. It is a truly masterful drama. The woman who plays Otilia is an extraordinary actor. Not since 2001: A Space Odyssey has the ending to a film been so devastating to me ! Very great film.

LAKIS P. gave it a10:
Pure filmaking . Answer to all these kind of movies which sucrifice a good idea for an oscar.BRAVO Romania.

Tomegun gave it a9:
A little slow at first for my taste....but it drags you in and gets pretty intense!

Emanuel A. gave it a10:
Only people that lived during that Romanian/Ceausescu era can understand this movie!Very well done and love the overall story.A+

M D. gave it a10:
Both a true-to-life drama about life in Romania in the eighties and a tense thriller. Must-see.

Emil P. gave it a10:
10+++. NO words.We can not run away from our reality.Outstanding sendingout emotions!

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