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97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
IFC First Take


7.9

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 85 votes
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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:	DVD: October 14, 2008 Theatrical: January 23, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	113 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Romania
LANGUAGE(S):	Romanian / English

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.

100

Time Richard Corliss

One of the strongest movies in recent years.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

4 Months unfolds like one of those street-level Dardenne brothers movies (Rosetta, L'Enfant).

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

A remarkably engrossing and thoughtful picture, beautifully rendered in an artful mode of realism.

100

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.

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.

100

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster.

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.

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.

100

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.

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.

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.

Slate Dana Stevens

A beautiful and formally compelling work of art.

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."

USA Today Claudia Puig

Depressing and gut-wrenching, but always powerful and gripping.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't.

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.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A grueling film in both technique and subject matter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 85 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Mike D. gave it a5:
Bill B. nailed it right on the head. Story is interesting but lacks a driving plotline. I expected a lot more given all the glowing reviews on metacritic.

Bill B. gave it a2:
You keep expecting something to happen, but nothing Happens in this movie. The doctor makes an unusual request half way through the movie, and that is all.

Andy M. gave it a9:
I was quite excited about seeing this movie, what with the fantastic reviews. And... I can't say I was disappointed, really. It had superb acting, and on the whole it was very well done. It was gripping, to the point that my friend and I were enthralled by every detail the film threw at us as we watched. The sad part is that, after all the thrills and the suspense and the drama, it didn't deliver. We wanted it to go in a Hollywood direction, we wanted that I.D. at the desk to mean something, for that little mention of a phone number to lead somewhere, but it didn't. It was comical, really, how much... MORE wanted. In any other film, this would have been devastating, but the incredible single takes and the emotion that the viewer couldn't help but feel along with the actors made it all too good otherwise. It's a worthwhile watch, just don't go into it expecting anything near your conventional film.

Iulian gave it a10:
Some of the finest acting I have seen on film. Beautiful shots and not melodramatic. I have found nothing in it to falsify reality (1980s in Romania).

Chad S. gave it a10:
When planning a murder, always remember to bring a plastic sheet, to catch the blood, to leave without a trace. Patrick Bateman(Christian Bale) remembered his plastic sheet in Mary Harron's "American Psycho". Gabita (Laura Vasilia) forgot hers, so she'll have to make do with a plastic bag. In our minds, we're thinking like Roy Scheider in "Jaws", as the bag is being laid out on the bed: You'll need a bigger... What if the bleeding doesn't stop? As is custom, we're worried that the woman won't survive the procedure. Most, if not all, of us, never consider the fetus, never give the unborn a second thought. But the film does, miraculously, without sanctimony. Catholic pedagogy doesn't make up our minds for us. It's our familiarity with genre conventions that does the trick. "4 luni, 3 santamani, 2 zile" stages the abortion, and more importantly, the aftermath, like a murder had just transpired. When Otilia(Anamaria Marinca) is pressed into action, remembrances of dead bodies rolled up in carpets from other crime movies, not that kind, old woman "Vera Drake", hit us square between the eyes.

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.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days IFC First Take

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
IFC First Take