4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is set in the dying days of communist Romania, where uncontrolled national debt has resulted in food being exported at reduced price to obtain hard currency (meaning massive food shortages for the population), and the Government's desperation to increase the birth rate has lead to the criminalisation of abortion.
In a lot of movies this would mean drab, washed out photography, scenes of secret police pistol whipping dissenters, crowds of starving people starting riots, and underground abortion clinics lit by ominous downlights. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days resorts to no such stereotype, but nonetheless carries an air of tension and opression right through it, and its realism serves to make it far more unnerving.
The movie is an uncompromising tribute to friendship and what a person will endure for someone they love, and I found it quite moving.
In reading up on the movie after my viewing it seems that Romania has recently produced quite a few films set during Nicolae CeauÅŸescu's regime, and if any of them are nearly as successful at evoking what it's like to live in an Eastern Bloc country, I can't wait to see them.
