In Ceausescu's Romania, a harrowing tale of choice

"4 Months" arrives in town on the top of many critics' best-of-2007 list but not among the five foreign-language Oscar nominees. The first point is legitimate, the second a legitimate scandal (the film was eligible and submitted), for 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.

As with other recent films from Romania - "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "12:08 Bucharest," among them - the visual style is fly-on-the-wall. The action unfolds in what feels like real time and there's no musical score. "4 Months" begins as Otilia sets out to assist her friend and roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) through a "termination," observing the ensuing developments from morning to night with a cynicism that only gradually shades into bottomless sympathy.

Gabita's a wreck - a scared young woman who muffs the simple preparation instructions the seedy abortionist (Vlad Ivanov) gives her and who isn't even sure how long she has been pregnant. (The film's omniscient title offers us, and only us, that information.) She forgets to reserve a hotel room, leaves the required plastic sheet at home; as the film progresses we sense she may be using her haplessness to shift the responsibilities to her friend.

Otilia shoulders them as a matter of course. Gabita is her friend, even if she is a user, and they live in a society that treats men as an inconvenience and women as something worse. Besides, they could go to jail for what they're doing.

Ceausescu made abortion illegal in 1966; concerned with the country's falling birth rate during the 1980s, the government introduced harsh punitive measures, with even miscarriages subject to police investigation. "4 Months" thus takes place in a mood of constant paranoia, of petty irritations and a kind of mass bickering. This, Mungiu implies, is what life under Ceausescu was like and why the dictator was the only Iron Curtain ruler to be taken out and shot during the Revolutions of 1989.