4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS & 2 DAYS WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY CRISTIAN MUNGIUWITH ANAMARIA MARINCA, LAURA VASILIU, VLAD IVANOV, AND ALEX POTOCEAN
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The shot lasts longer than you expect, and that sort of patience is just one way the director expresses his trust in the audience. There’s no music telling you what to feel; there’s almost no camera movement telling you where to look. Instead of cutting from establishing shot to medium shot to close-up, Mungiu and talented cinematographer Oleg Mutu carefully compose their wide-screen tableaux and then stick with them for minutes at a time, letting characters walk in and out of view and letting your eye wander around the screen and pick out salient details. Human nature being what it is, once you settle into the movie’s steady gaze, you’re inclined to trust a storyteller who trusts you.
Nearly every scene involves some sort of haggling—even Otilia’s brief encounter with her boyfriend centers on his insistence that she come to dinner at his parents’ house that evening. When Otilia arrives at the hotel, the officious clerk at the front desk has no record of Gabita’s reservation and challenges Otilia’s claim that her friend called ahead. Forced to try another hotel, Otilia is interrogated by the receptionist, who demands her ID and bluntly asks why she and her friend need a hotel room when they live in a nearby dorm. In each scene Mungiu uses the front desk to bisect the frame, placing Otilia in opposition to her inquisitor, and each of them lords it over her with rudeness and long silences. Though the movie isn’t overtly political, it captures the chilly emotional terrain of life in a country where the government’s rigid control has filtered down to everyday transactions.
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