The story takes place over the course of a single day in 1987, two years before the overthrow and execution of evil bastard dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
But under Ceausescu's 24 year rule, abortion was punishable by 3 to 10 years in prison:
New laws are introduced to engineer an increase in the size of Romania's population. "The foetus is the property of the entire society," Ceausescu states, "Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."Abortion and contraception are outlawed, childless couples face higher taxes, divorce is discouraged, and sex education prohibited. The birth-rate almost doubles, but is accompanied by a leap in infant mortality and unwanted pregnancies, with the rising numbers of handicapped, orphaned and abandoned children being placed in decrepit institutions under state care. After the fall of Ceausescu in 1989 over 100,000 handicapped and orphaned children are discovered living in horrific conditions.
None of this is in the text of the movie, it's all just baked into the noirish atmosphere that drenches this movie as we follow college student Otilia as she helps her friend, Gabrita, get clandestine abortion. Every advance is fraught with dread and danger, as it gradually becomes clear that Otilia is putting herself way, way out on a limb for a friend, and we're wondering whether it's that maybe the friend isn't so deserving, or maybe by making this act illegal, their rulers have put the most basic form of human bonding, that of friendship, into permanent contradiction.
Anamaria Marinca, who plays Otilia, turns in the best female performance of the year. We're with her every nerve-wracking step of the way. In the middle of the picture there's a single hint of why she's so much stronger than the passively damaging friend for whom she chooses to go through the ringer (Laura Vasiliu, also riveting although not who we bond with): she's a soldier's daughter. It's never mentioned elsewhere, and there aren't any pyrotechnic heroics. But in that repressive, terrifying and deadening world, she is Orpheus on a journey through hell, damned if she looks back.
Director Cristian Mungiu evidently rehearsed heavily for two and a half weeks, then along with Cinematographer Oleg Mutu made the decision to shoot every scene in a single shot, no cuts. Usually the camera is fixed in the perfect spot, most notably in the dinner scene where Otilia is unspeakably lonely in the midst of the celebratory chatter of her boyfriend's family friends, all of them clearly having accepted life under the regime, the generation getting by just fine, just playing by the rules and pretending to have normal bourgeois lives. But other scenes, particularly following Otilia on the move, go for long, heart-pounding handheld takes, yet always maintaining the unique claustrophobia of her situation at that moment in history in that society.
If you ever want to see a movie to make you hate Communism, this is the one.
The abortion issue is not treated lightly, nor (as I've indicated above) is Gabrita portrayed as a saint. As the title indicates, this isn't the first trimester, and the movie is far from supportive of abortion so late in the gestation period. But what I think gives the movie such resonance is the depiction of how loyalty gets so twisted under a fascist regime, down at the street -- or dorm -- level. Even the heavy of the piece, abortionist "Mr. Bebe" (Los Angeles Film Critics Award winner Vlad Ivanov), seems to operate per a kind of perverse survival strategy in the republic.
I don't want to give too much away and hope I haven't so far, but I'll just say that the first shot of the movie begins on two goldfish swimming around a tank, sitting on the dorm room table as the women make their preparations to leave. It's no accident that glasses of water echo this image at the end of the film, albeit in a subtle and clever way. These women are trapped just as transparently as their goldfish, as unaware of a world outside the glass, as vulnerable to surveillance as them as well.
As Otilia's experiences Mr. Bebe, the devastating cost of her friend's transgression and her own divided loyalties, it's fair to wonder which animal, 1987 Romanian or goldfish, has the better deal.
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