This article is excerpted from "Dream and Reality in Light and Shadow - The Code of the Cannes Film Festival", original author: Zheng Shi
"Three Weeks and Two Days in April": Life in a game of cat and mouse
Christian Monge
The core plot and filming method of "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (Romanian: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile) are simple, but it is not easy to truly understand the theme that the choreographer wants to express. Romanian director Cristian Mungiu chronicles a difficult day for two female college students. Behind the silent narrative, buried is his revelation and sympathy for a state of life.
The film begins in a messy student dormitory, where the two heroines, Otilia and Gabriela 'Gabita' Dragut, prepare for their trip. Trivial conversations between the girls obscure some of the details that viewers should be noting. In this passage, the director deliberately uses the medium shot, rarely using close-ups to hint at important clues buried in it. As the film progresses, we gradually realize that they are important for the later plot. For example, the tablecloth that Gabita removed was later put back.
If the director had used some close-ups to represent this passage, the style of the film would have been completely different. That way, the audience will be more focused on the plot. But Monji didn't want to do that, he wanted to present the protagonist's state of life. The medium and close-up images present more things than close-ups, because there is no special emphasis on anything, which will appear more objective.
Although the two girls are preparing for a big thing, they are not very anxious. Otilja, in particular, has a lot to worry about: pooling money, buying cigarettes and soap according to the signs assigned by Gabita, not being found by the teacher for not going to class on time, and the upcoming exams. But Otilja seemed relaxed, as if she could handle these things with ease, so she could still be in the mood to find milk powder for the kittens in the other dormitories.
The camera follows Otilja constantly, and also takes the audience into Romania in the 1980s. The girls' dormitories are simple and cluttered, but the students are at ease. Whether it is daily necessities or practical information, they communicate with each other, help each other, and there are students who sell cosmetics in the dormitory. For the social rules of life here, they all seem to be self-taught and easy to use.
Otilja ran out of school and caught up with the bus when she was confronted by someone checking her tickets. From the expressions of the passengers, it can be seen that everyone is not surprised by the cat and mouse game of ticket evasion and inspection. Soon someone reached out and handed Otilja a ticket. She immediately put the ticket into the ticket machine. Inspectors apparently knew she wanted to evade the ticket, as passengers should have voluntarily picked tickets in the machine as soon as they boarded the bus. But the inspectors said nothing. Regulations are regulations, reality is reality, and everyone is tacit.
We saw this more clearly when we booked our hotel room next. The relationship between the staff responsible for booking the room and the customer is not like the relationship between the service and the service being served. Otilja knew that if she wanted to book a room, she had to respect the power in the hands of the staff. She was given a room after buying black market cigarettes and bribing them to the staff. In this regard, she did not show any unhappiness, as if everything was taken for granted, and there was no need to be more real.
This attitude can help us better understand what happens next. She takes Viarel 'Domnu' Bebe to the hotel only to find that things are not at all what she thought. The money she had painstakingly put together could not satisfy the doctor's appetite. And Gabita lied to her and Mr. Babe. Gabita told Mr. Babe on the phone that she was two months pregnant, but when he checked in person, Gabita was forced to admit that she had been pregnant for more than four months. To be precise, four months, three weeks, two days, the title of the film comes from this.
Mr. Babe was annoyed to find out that she had been hiding the number of days. According to Romanian law at the time, doctors who performed abortions on patients were sentenced, but the sentences imposed within three months of fetal development and after three months of fetal development varied greatly. After three months, the fetus is formed and is considered to be alive. The nature of abortion is more like murder.
But Mr. Babe had another meaning, which Otilia didn't understand until later. He asked for the possession of the female patient first. Women who are pregnant early and longer have physical changes. Did Gabita know his intentions when he called Mr. Babe to make an appointment, or did he understand it after they met? Gabita lied to Mr. Babe that Otilja was her sister, and she didn't tell Otilja the truth from the beginning, really as she explained it herself, just because she forgot?
For Otilja, these questions were no longer important. Mr. Babe asked for possession of the two girls, otherwise the operation would not have been performed. If Gabita doesn't have an abortion now, the baby in her womb gets bigger and bigger, and her trouble will be even greater. And they have booked a room for three days, and the room rate is not a small amount of money. In order to keep Mr. Babe, Otilia agreed. Later in the film, she tells her boyfriend's family that she and the girl in the dorm room are good friends. Does Gabitta think the same thing? She knew Otilja very well, did she know that Otilja would agree, so she didn't tell Otilja beforehand? If that's the case, it means that Otilya has actually fallen into the trap set by her friends...
Otillia didn't have time to think about that. After being forced to contribute to her dormmates, she set off again. This time it was for boyfriend Adi Radu (Alex Potocean). She agreed to go to Adi's mother's birthday dinner. Previously, although she was a little reluctant, she still agreed to buy a bouquet of flowers to take with her. But after this happened, she was completely in no mood at all.
Otilia found that the banquet had many guests, and they were all elders. Despite her bad mood, when she sat down at the table, she had to change her expression and obediently listen to the people around the table talking about the current social and living conditions. In this passage, the camera is all the way to Ottelia, and apart from the person next to her, we don't even know what the other guests look like, and how many people are chatting together. This technique is used several times in the film. According to the conventional shooting method, to show such a scene, so that everyone appears, it takes a lot of space to move the camera, lighting and other equipment. Therefore, it may be necessary to shoot in a specially built studio. But using the film's shooting method, there is no need to move the public like that. This low-budget film, which invested 600,000 euros, does not have the capital to move the public.
Whether for financial reasons or not, single-camera dialogue scenes provide a unique visual style for this film. The fixed picture allows the viewer to focus on the expression of the character, and has a continuous effect, which can not be interrupted and interfered with by other pictures. Of course, this ignores other interlocutors.
After Mr. Babe left after performing surgery on Gabita. Otillia sat down, facing Gabita lying on the bed, and she had not yet recovered from the shock—Mr. Babe's shamelessness was completely beyond her imagination. Otillia began to think about it: Why did they choose Mr. Babe over another doctor in the first place? The camera shoots Ottiriya from the side, and Gabita, who is asking and answering her, is out of the picture, and only her voice can be heard. Assuming that you have to choose one of them because you don't have enough space to shoot two people at the same time, there is a better reason to choose Otiriya than to choose Gabita. The impact of this on Ottiriya was obviously greater, and she made sacrifices entirely out of friendship. At this time, how she will react is exactly what this film wants to show. Of course, the first heroine of this film is Otiriya.
The conversation at the Adi family banquet can be seen as an introduction to the background of the film's era. Otillia is just a schoolgirl with limited experience and knowledge of society. Others are basically old, and they not only have experience, but also have to pay attention to many things in order to cope with life. On the other hand, Otillia also felt alienated from these elders. Every generation lives in the self. The problems that Otilia encountered were difficult for them to understand.
Even her boyfriend, Adi, is still opposed to abortion in the face of the same dilemma as Otilia. What makes Otilea angry is that if he suddenly becomes pregnant, Adi has no idea how to face it, and he only loves Ottilia, but never thinks about it for Otilia. When an unreasonable law is enforced, as long as they are not harmed by it, ordinary people will not consider it, and they will defend it without thinking. Adi proposes that if Otiri is pregnant, they will marry. Otillia did not want to accept handouts. If Adi had only been pregnant to help her marry her, she wouldn't have wanted to marry him because of that. Otillia got up and left, not having the heart to deal with Adi anymore.
There were too many people she had to deal with. Back at the hotel, confronted with the janitor's questioning, she instinctively uttered a string of lies. In Otilia's life, it seems that she must always be ready to lie, because the truth cannot be told to anyone, and even the most legitimate thing needed for survival must be solved by means other than legitimate. The janitor also had a look of disbelief at Otillia's words. But it was his duty to inquire. Just like acting, each of them knows that the other person is an actor, is speaking lines, and it is impossible to expose the real situation. But the play needs to be performed, so there is no other choice, each person can only play one role.
The most unbearable scene in the film is a direct representation of the fetus after the abortion. The camera looks down on it for several seconds, apparently intent on making it clear to the viewer. For most viewers, this is probably the first time in their lives. And the camera is very sudden, completely forced, and everyone is facing a blurred object of flesh and blood. And, this is not a subjective shot. The camera was shot inside the bathroom, and the protagonist, Otilya, was standing in the bathroom doorway looking in. After she left, the camera suddenly turned to the object placed on the ground. Is this cross-inserted shot necessary? Why did the director deliberately do this?
When Otilia hears Gabita say that she has excreted the fetus, it is her responsibility to throw it away where people cannot find it. It was also the first time she had seen this thing. The camera captures her expression when she sees the fetus from her side. The bathroom light illuminated her face and stood out in the darkness of the room. The usual practice is that the presentation of the heroine ends here, and as long as the audience sees a woman's shock, it is enough to represent the horror of the matter. However, Otilja should be mentally prepared, and she has become accustomed to hiding her feelings. So, she didn't show any particular panic or fear, just stared at it in a daze. The camera then shifted to her front and photographed her face from the bathroom, reinforcing Otilja's feelings again. If the end of the paragraph at this point is actually in line with the usual practice, the expression has already been presented.
But the director felt that it was not enough, and he had to let the audience experience Otilja's situation. As a woman of childbearing age, she not only had to put this bloody thing in a bag, but also had to sneak it away in the streets in the dark of night. That's what the film is going to do next. The camera is again on the fetus: Otilja wraps her up and tucks her into her bag. Then she rushed down the stairs and came into the darkness again.
We can't count the first times she's been in a hurry, and the first time she's walked alone down a dark street. For her girlfriend and boyfriend, Otilja has been busy all day. In the morning, she was confident that she could solve all her problems. When she finally finished disposing of the fetus, Otilia and Gabitta sat facing each other, and she only hoped that they would never mention the day again.