There is a photo of Cristian Mungiu receiving the Palme D’Or at the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival in which Jane Fonda playfully tugs the Romanian film director’s cheek in front of jury members David Cronenberg, Stephen Frears and Charlotte Rampling. Never has a Cannes winner managed to look so awkward, embarrassed, sheepish and star-struck at the same time. In fact, the only discernable emotion the 39-year old director of ‘Four Months, Three weeks, Two Days’ didn’t appear to show on receiving the European film industry’s most prestigious award was shock.
“We never expected to win Cannes before we were accepted in the competition,” says Mungiu in a phone interview. “But after the unanimous press reception, we weren’t that surprised we got it.”
Although Mungiu had only one film under his belt before Cannes, he rapidly emerged as one of the favourites to win the French festival’s top prize after critics emerged gushing from a screening of his ‘Four Months…’ - which opens in Belgium next week.
“This movie is grim, but also thrilling, in part because it is a reminder of
cinema's peculiar and durable ability to turn ugliness and desperation into art,” wrote the International Herald Tribune’s film reviewer. The Guardian described it as “stunningly shot,” “unblinkingly tense” and “utterly gripping,” while The Hollywood Reporter classed the film as “dark, gloomy and without music, but also observant and highly suspenseful.”
“Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days” refers to the exact length of time scatterbrained student Gabita is pregnant. With abortion illegal in communist Romania, Gabita turns to resourceful roommate Otilia for help in finding a doctor and the money to pay him for terminating her pregnancy. The problem is the backstreet abortionist they turn to is as cruel and crooked as the system he works under.
Both girls soon find themselves trapped in a web of lies and deceit – partly of their own making – that only gets more sticky and tangled as their half-baked plans unravel. This is not a horror film – there are no special effects, high-pitched violins and supernatural hocus pocus– but by the end the viewer is left drained by the unsparing bleakness and unbearable suspense of the girls’ drama.
Set in the twilight years of Nicolae Ceaucescu’s rule, Mungiu’s film paints a grim picture of life in eastern Europe’s most repressive regime. But the director denies its aim is political. “It was not my intention to make a chronicle of the system. That kind of film about communism is way over,” he says. “I never wanted to make a ‘Goodbye Lenin’ type of movie. I wanted to make a film about my youth, about people growing up in their 20s. That’s why I purposefully avoided any mention of communism or Ceaucescu. People didn’t have a problem with communism per se; they had a problem with daily things.”
So if the film is not about communism or abortion – as the director contends - what is it about? “For some it was a film about loneliness, friendship and solidarity,” says Mungiu. “It is about all those things, but I don’t like reductionism. I just wanted to tell a story without looking for a message to be transmitted.” But seconds later, the English literature graduate says: “It’s a story about choices in life and taking responsibility for what you do.”
‘Four Months…’ is shot in a similar style to the films of Ken Loach and
the Dardenne brothers – that is to say gritty, austere and uncompromising. “My most important idea for the film was to be absent from it,” he says. “That is why there are long takes, no music and minimal editing. I wanted to preserve the honesty of the story and a sense of simplicity to have as direct an impact as possible.”
Mungiu’s success follows that of fellow countrymen Cristi Puiu – whose black comedy ‘Death of Mr Lazarescu’ won the ‘Certain Regard’ prize at Cannes two years ago – and Corneliu Porumboiu, whose film ’12.08 East of Bucharest’ was an art-house hit last year.
So does the boyish-looking director feel part of a new ‘Romanian wave’ similar to that of France and Italy in the 1960s or Denmark in the 1990s? “Technically we don’t share the same view about cinema - like the Dogma directors do. If we have something in common it is a certain freedom with the films we are making because we are our own producers. From a stylistic point of view, the only thing we have in common is a certain interest in strong, story driven personal stories and a certain simplicity towards making films.”
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18 years after the fall of Ceaucescu? “We got to an age when we remembered stories from our 20s, which were the last days of communism,” says Mungiu, adding: “You need some distance to tell stories about what happened to you when you were young.”
Mungiu made ‘Four Months…” for 700,000 euros, which he says is about the right cost for a movie. “I don’t think it would have been a very different film if I’d had four times the amount.” But with a Palme D’Or on his mantelpiece, how long will the Romanian be able to resist Tinseltown’s big bucks? While confessing that most of his e-mails are from agents, Mungiu says he is reluctant to direct someone else’s film in Hollywood. “I’m not the kind of film-maker who has his next five projects in mind. I need to clear my mind of my last project.” Given the raw energy and emotional intensity of ‘Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days,” that is no easy task.