4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days *
Cristian Mungiu, 2008
Romania
@ IFC Center

I could not get into this, which is strange because it's so similar to Mr. Lazarescu, one of my very favorite movies from 2006. I guess that had more dark humor, though, and this is just dark. Perhaps it is less of a thriller if you are already pretty cynical about human behavior; that is, where is the suspense if you expect everything to just go downhill, and then it does?

Stuart Klawans in The Nation:

The last remaining comparison would be with the other films in Romania's purported new wave--which is to say, 4 Months has to pass the Death of Mr. Lazarescu test. Here, I think, it falls a little short, for reasons that go back to that absence of levity. Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu has all the fear and trembling, and all the outrage, of Mungiu's film; but at the same time (to quote a better critic than I, Ben Sonnenberg), "it's as funny as Beckett." It's this doubleness of emotion, far more than the protagonist's allegorical name, that allows everything in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu to seem greater than its circumstances. By contrast, what you see is what you get in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film may share some of Mr. Lazarescu's traits--its long takes, its satirical edge--but in the end, it gives you gallows humor without the humor.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Stuart Klawans review