4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
IFC Films | Release Date: January 23, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
97
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
37
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
This year’s foreign language Oscar scandal – there is always at least one – is the snub of director Cristian Mungiu’s disturbing, masterful realist drama following two college roommates as they carry out plans for one’s black market abortion in Communist Romania. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The film is bold stroke that hopes to push Romanian society forward by staring into the dismal failures of its recent past. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Despite their terrible ordeal these women are heroes, not victims. As Mungiu makes clear in the casual, brilliant final scene of this amazing movie, heroes persevere. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
First, this movie should be enjoyed. Later, marveled at. And then, once the excitement has faded, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days really should be studied, because director Cristian Mungiu creates scenes unlike any ever filmed.
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
The New Wave of Romanian cinema is the most exciting in the world right now. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is its latest masterpiece. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu confirms the Romanian cinema renaissance while creating a paradoxical marvel: a bleak tale of illegal abortion that powerfully affirms one's faith in people. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The result is a mixture of unified atmosphere and lived-in character study, and while Vasiliu’s role is not as indelible as that of her co-stars, Marinca’s Otilia and Ivanov’s steely abortionist are just about perfect. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is a powerful film and a stark visual accomplishment, but no thanks to Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). The driving character is her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who does all the heavy lifting. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
A grueling and deeply affecting human drama. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
In a truly great movie the form becomes indistinguishable from the story, and that’s certainly the case here. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Without a single gunshot (and just one flick of a switchblade), it turns into an existential suspense film with the highest stakes imaginable: the survival of the human spirit. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film. Read full review
100
EmpireDamon Wise
Tense, kinetic, intelligent and real – as if Paul Greengrass had remade Vera Drake. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
One of the strongest movies in recent years. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing. Read full review
100
VarietyJay Weissberg
Pitch perfect and brilliantly acted, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a stunning achievement, helmed with a purity and honesty that captures not just the illegal abortion story at its core but the constant, unremarked negotiations necessary for survival in the final days of the Soviet bloc. Read full review
100
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in the last gasp of Nicolae Ceausescu’s iron-fisted regime, it’s no metaphor, but a sordidly visceral transaction conducted in the next best thing to a back alley. Read full review
100
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
You just don't expect Hollywood to produce a masterwork so early in the new year. And it hasn't. This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Nothing good happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the riveting, horrifying chronicle of an illegal abortion performed in 1987 when Ceauescu's dictatorial hand still gripped Romania's throat. And yet no lover of greatness in filmmaking will want to look away from one of the very best movies of 2007. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
It’s a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
4 Months unfolds like one of those street-level Dardenne brothers movies (Rosetta, L'Enfant). Read full review
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
A remarkably engrossing and thoughtful picture, beautifully rendered in an artful mode of realism. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film. Read full review
90
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Anamaria Marinca delivers an utterly transfixing performance as Otilia, a young woman who helps a friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist Ceausescu regime. Read full review
90
SlateDana Stevens
A beautiful and formally compelling work of art. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The coup de grâce is especially graceless because everything we know is already visible in Marinca’s eyes. The actress is extraordinary. Read full review
88
New York PostV.A. Musetto
It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Depressing and gut-wrenching, but always powerful and gripping. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Relentlessly dark but expertly rendered, it shares its cinematographer and quality of aggrieved compassion with another recent Romanian art house hit, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu." Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Despite being slow and deliberate, it is often compelling and occasionally riveting. As "The Lives of Others" was in 2007, this is the first memorable movie of 2008. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
A grueling film in both technique and subject matter. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
This is a tale of friendship, corruption, betrayal and desperation masterfully told without an ounce of filmmaking flash and with an unflinching commitment to realism. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
The film is dark, gloomy and without music, but it is also observant and highly suspenseful, with Mungiu using his often static camera to balance banal cruelty with simple generosity. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Mungiu’s pacing is so sure, however, in its switching from loose to taut, and the concentration of his leading lady so unwavering, that the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels more like a thriller than a moody wallow. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
A curious filmgoing experience: Virtuosic, assured, and possessed of undeniable aesthetic force, it’s also hard not to turn away from. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
It makes "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "12:08 East of Bucharest," the last glum Romanian movies about life under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, seem merry. Read full review
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