'4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days'

At various times in Cristian Mungiu's blistering drama, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," lights are turned on, but the dim, low-wattage bulbs used in late '80s Romania do little to brighten up the surroundings. Any illumination comes directly from the exquisite rendering of Mungiu's characters.

Over the course of a single day, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), has to help her dorm mate, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), set up an abortion, involving booking a hotel room, meeting the awful "doctor" (Vlad Ivanov) and organizing the money. She also has to go to a party for the mother of her boyfriend, Adi (Alexandru Potocean), and do it all while dealing with the idiotically repressive and inefficiently bureaucratic system of her country. Mungiu's film is drab and colorless, echoes of cold and exhaust fill almost every frame, and snow can be seen falling outside, but the intensity of the situation -- abortion being highly illegal in Catholic Romania -- and the desperation of the characters, drives every extended scene.

To play off that anxiety, Mungiu cleverly shoots in extremely long takes, following Otilia for minutes at a time as she tries to negotiate with hotel clerks, or is forced to listen to her boyfriend's parents' friends as they ramble on at a dinner party. At times, the takes go on so long, and are so fraught with tension, you find yourself clutching at the armrests of your seat in helpless apprehension.

To Mungiu's credit, we also find more and more about the characters as the film goes on -- Gabita's ungracious manipulativeness, for example -- and most of it negative, but it still doesn't dim our sympathies for their plight. The end result is a Dogme 95-style naturalistic masterpiece, as intricately woven and delicately put together as an ancient tapestry. The lives of the characters are fully invested, imbued with ambiguity and shimmering with verisimilitude. They won't soon leave you. By the time the screen cuts to black at the end of this harrowing night, you get the sense that the characters will continue on in their haphazard fashion without us: Only the camera gets shut off.

Disc Extras: Included in this 4K digital restoration edition are some key extras, including a new (and engrossing) interview with the understated director, an interview with critic Jay Weissberg on the explosion of Romanian cinema, some deleted scenes, and the news conference after it debuted at Cannes in 2007.