Women on the Verge: Cristian Mungiu

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AMONG THE MANY SURPRISES in Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's devastating feature "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," which deservedly won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, is the fact that its emotional focus isn't Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), the desperate girl seeking an abortion in the waning days of communist rule, but the resourceful Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who shepherds her weak-minded friend through a scenario so nightmarish it must be a screenwriter's exaggeration.

Mungiu, who wrote the screenplay as the first of a planned "Tales of the Golden Age" series (note the irony), counters that such things happened and much worse, and a kind of historical amnesia is creeping over Romanian youth born after the 1989 revolution. In his brutal yet artful way, Mungiu is out to remind them — and the world — what life was like under the Soviets.

As Otilia negotiates her roommate's illegal procedure, the story becomes one about the commodification of life, services, pleasures, even people.

"What was going on during that period is that people were trying to imagine that they were having a normal life like everyone else by having access to this very precious proof that there is a world out there. ... [Smoking] Kents, this was a social sign, a way of signaling to others that you could afford the service you were asking for."

Mungiu shot in Bucharest, treating locations with sets and obscuring the advertising placards, cars and satellite dishes that pock the contemporary landscape. ("It's very difficult to shoot a period piece now," he says.) The leaden urbane landscape becomes a rat maze as the tension rises; even the coolest-toned scenes are gut-twisting to watch.

"It's unsettling because what was happened to [Otilia] is unsettling. I was trying to tell all the film from her perspective. ... For me, the final 30 minutes, this is the attempt of making an art-house film using the expectations of people who watch a lot of mainstream cinema."

Ah, the final 30 minutes. For fans of Hollywood — or even of the Hollywood art film — the exact nature of the mounting horror at play is at once ambiguous and wrenchingly plausible.

"I think this is what a filmmaker should do — not abuse the means that you have, because as a filmmaker, it's very easy to be manipulative. I wanted spectators to witness the story."

» Landmark E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; opens Fri.; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)

Photo courtesy IFC First Take