Pretty, dark-haired Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is pregnant, but in the waning years of Ceausescu’s Communist Romania, she lacks the determination to control her fate. So she doesn’t get to be the protagonist. Instead, we get Otilia (the incredible Anamaria Marinca), a pragmatic blond who’s expert at locating orange Tic Tacs and Kent cigarettes on the black market. For a college student, she’s certainly savvy, but procuring an illegal abortion for Gabita requires something more.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is about loyalty, cowardice, coercion, annoying social obligations, tragic personal sacrifices, and—above all—almost unbearable tension. Dread is stretched taut over this plot like skin over a pregnant belly. The most elegant piece of cinema I’ve seen in months shows Otilia sitting still, facing an immobile camera. She’s attending a birthday party for her boyfriend’s mother, and his bourgeois family is crowded around the table, pressuring her to eat, only pretending to overlook her inadequate table manners, and all but scoffing outright at her class background. Her boyfriend can’t wait to get her upstairs to his tiny room, but Otilia is obsessed with the phone. She’d given Gabita the number in case anything went wrong. Now it’s ringing. Can she leave the table without being excused?

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days almost qualifies as a horror film, where the monster is at once diffuse (the repressive government, mandatory ID checks) and sickeningly specific (the freelance abortionist). But the most terrifying moments are completely mundane. Will Otilia risk offending her hosts in order to check on her friend? And if not, does she deserve our sympathy or our scorn? Ultimately, this film isn’t about abortion, any more than Juno was. It’s about ethics; and it is riveting.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS DIR. CRISTIAN MUNGIU | RATED NR | AT SELECT THEATERS

Tags: 4 months 3 weeks and 2 days, abortion, Film