December 19, 2007
Hugh Hart, Los Angeles Times
This year’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” chronicles a bleak day in the life of a pregnant college student who enlists her roommate to arrange an illegal abortion. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s drama culminates in a brutal bargain the two women strike with a black-market abortionist. And the backdrop for Romania’s foreign language film Oscar contender is every bit as grim as the characters’ predicament.