"I close my eyes and see everything."
Set in Romania in the 1980s, the film "Two Days in April" tells the story of gabita, a female college student, from accidental pregnancy to abortion.
The reason why the film chooses to refine and enlarge this time in the life experience of young women stems from the concern for women's fate on the one hand, but in this film, the choice of subject matter is more attached to the current Romanian social system, and in the deformed society shown through the film, not only women, but even most men live in a "monitored" life situation.
The film begins with a long period of freeze-frame, followed by a dark curtain that leads to the film's epochal background, "Romania in 1987", and then switches to a relatively static still life, with two trapped goldfish in the middle of the fish tank, one trapped in the corner, the other swimming quietly in the water, and the lower left corner of the same picture is a burning cigarette.
At the beginning of the film, the film strives to create a film atmosphere that matches the social environment and the main body of the story, and tries to establish a sense of dramatic urgency beyond reality. In the eighty years of Romania's socio-economic depression, agricultural harvest failure, the government in order to fully repay the foreign debt continues to reduce people's consumption, throughout the eighties fresh meat and eggs and milk and other foods in the market almost disappeared, in order to save money, the country's street lights can only be lit one-third.
So this also explains why the heroine of the film, Otilia, has to go through several twists and turns when she wants to buy cigarettes, why the birthday party prepared by her boyfriend's mother needs to queue up more than three hours in advance to buy meat and eggs, and why the streets shown in the film are bright but still dark.
Against this backdrop, in order to stimulate consumption and increase population growth, the government announced the repeal of the law that women could have abortions freely before 1966, and banned abortion nationwide, and women must truthfully cooperate with monthly "menstrual checks".
Against this background, female university student Gabita unexpectedly becomes pregnant and pleads with the dorm girl, Otilia, to help her privately contact the male doctor Bibi to have an abortion for her in the hotel.
As for how Gabita got pregnant, the film does not mention, of course, this is not the main body of this film to explore or the sound, and why Otilea, who is in the same dormitory, risks the huge risk of squatting in prison to help Gabita, which is explained through the fish tank at the beginning of the film.
The two goldfish in the fish tank metaphor Gabita and Otilbia, the goldfish that is trapped in the corner and swimming quietly refers to Otilya and Gabita, although the survival dynamics of the two are different, but they are ultimately living in the same environment, trapped in the same system, but also to a certain extent, the fate of the two is connected, Gabita only Otilia can ask for help. But Ottelia's enthusiasm and kindness were like the goldfish that was trapped in the corner of the fish tank like her.
Unlike Gabita's resignation and cowardice, Otillia is the only woman in a bad environment who develops a sense of rebellion and tries to break through this situation.
The dark environment tone at the beginning of the film is more relaxed than that of Gabita, who is packing her belongings in a panic, and Otillia, wearing a blue blouse, becomes one of the few bright colors in the picture other than goldfish.
Before getting ready to go out, Ottelia changed into an emerald green knitted top, and the bright colors formed a very strong visual contrast with the dullness of the interior, the helplessness of Gabita, or the depressed and desolate winter outside the window, even if the character has not yet been constructed, but a few simple scenes still outline the vivid female image of Otiliya.
At the birthday party of her boyfriend Adi's mother, Otilia still wears this green knit shirt, while Adi's mother wears a brightly colored red sweater like Otilia, Adi's father wears a relatively low-brightness blue top, and as a boyfriend, Adi is in an extremely easy to ignore position, both from the color of the clothes and the position in the picture.
In fact, from the perspective of image color alone, red and green complement each other, also known as contrasting colors, whether from a visual or even psychological level, red and green represent two opposite action instructions. This opposing relationship is reinforced when Adi's parents' friends accuse Otilia of not drinking and smoking in front of her boyfriend's parents.
Not only that, but the metaphorical use of color in the film is much more than that. Bibi, a personal doctor who uses Gabita's demand for abortion to blackmail Ortilia, meets the two in a red car, along with the gas station in the film, the bloodied hotel towel and the red sofa outside the room that jabbita has suffered from abortion.
Thus, a dangerous allegory released by "red" gradually establishes in the film. This ubiquitous oppression is like an invisible shackle that constantly engulfs and impacts Ottiriya from body to mind. The strength of the boyfriend's mother and the betrayal of the friend fell like a soldering iron on Otilya's mind, constantly whipping Otillia to soberly recognize this indifferent world.
The director puts the panic and helplessness conveyed throughout the story on two women who are in their youth, whether from social identity or age limit, it seems to be different from women of this age in the audience's cognition, while carrying the risk of crime, they also need to bear more psychological pressure from mental suffering.
For the two women in the film, "being respected" seems to be a more distant and unfamiliar thing, this society carries more helplessness and absurdity, and the absurd world of mistaken entry brings love sweetness to life while also allowing women to bear more severe verbal attacks and physical humiliation.
It's like the long night when Ortilia was carrying a fetal corpse, panicked and scared, but she couldn't run to the end...