Two young women in a college dorm preparing for a weekend away. Pretty ordinary stuff. But soon we discover that their getaway is for one of them to have an illegal abortion. That gives a much more serious tone to the Romanian film 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days—winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2007.

During the Communist period in Romania, abortion was outlawed. As a result, millions of women had illegal abortions. More than 500,000 women died as a result of these abortions. But such statistics are meaningless without the context of the individuals that make them up. 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days shows one woman who goes through this procedure. It is based on a story a young woman (the character Otillia in the film) told to director Cristian Mungiu fifteen years ago.

Gabita has made the necessary plans, but needs her roommate Otillia to help take care of her during this time. As it turns out, Gabita has made a mess of making the plans, so there are various hurdles they need to overcome before the abortion can occur. Otillia becomes far more involved than she had planned to be, especially in dealing with the abortionist, Mr. Bebe. In the midst of this, Otillia also has to make an appearance at her boyfriend’s house to meet the parents. Otillia has her own issues and apprehensions about the abortion—far more than Gabita, who just seems to be trying to be done with it all.

No doubt many will see this as an anti-abortion film. While it has aspects that could be seen that way, I think that idea should be approached with caution. The context in Communist Romania when abortion was illegal should temper any attempt to read this in light of our culture. According to Mungiu, “Abortion lost any moral connotation and was rather perceived as an act of rebellion and resistance against the regime.” Indeed, this film deals very little with the moral aspect of abortion. It is much more a personal look at those involved, especially Gabita, Otillia, and Mr. Bebe.

Stylistically, the film involves many very long takes, almost always just one shot per scene. The viewer has the sensation of being in the midst of the scene—more as an eavesdropper than a distant viewer. Such closeness and involvement is disturbing. The film is designed to be upsetting, so in that it is successful. It also takes us into the dark underground world of back-alley abortions in a way we have never really understood.

Mr. Bebe is not a nice person. He is risking jail to perform abortions, so he doesn’t need to be nice. He is also exploitive. He doesn’t do this out of some sense of helping women; he does it to get as much money as he can make them give him. He also takes other cruder and more degrading forms of payment.

In Gabita and Otillia we get a sense of the desperation and fear involved in having to have an abortion in this manner. They are in a real sense victims of an oppressive system—not just the exploitive abortionist or a society that forces abortion to be done that way, but victims of the entire Communist system that has brought it all about. Corruption is everywhere. One of the most important things you can have, it turns out, is Kent cigarettes, which seem to grease the way when you need to get something done; they work better than money.

The real power of this film is not in its treatment of abortion, but in the focus on the characters and the predicaments they face because of where they are and what they are doing. The opening of the film, as they seem to be planning a trip away, makes this into something of a road picture, but an emotional road. The journey they take doesn’t go quite the way they had planned. It’s uncertain at the end if they are happy with where they have arrived. That is the way it often works out. We have no idea where the roads we choose to follow will lead us.