This is an exceptionally good film - and that from someone who watched it with English subtitles. I can only imagine how devastating it must be for those who speak Romanian. It’s about a woman trying to get an abortion in mid-1980s Romania, during the reign of dictator Nicolai Ceausescu; and though nothing in the film is particularly appealing, nearly every frame is compelling evidence of how powerful film can be as a medium for storytelling.
I’m not an expert on Hitchcock, but I got the feeling that there were echoes of his kind of suspense in this picture - not exactly misdirection or sleight of hand, but something along that line. On more than one occasion, the camera held on one of the characters while the action taking place in the scene occurred off-screen. Those shots built tension, I suppose, more so than suspense; but the technique was very well done, either way. (There’s probably a name for it, but I don’t know what that name is.)
The ending was quite effective, too - resolving the central part of the story while leaving much unsaid and hinted at, which is often a very good way to end a movie. It works because the movie is less about the ethics of abortion than it is about the freedom to have an abortion if a woman makes a free choice to do so. In mid-80s Romania, a woman did not have that freedom; and while the film is compelling cinema in many of the technical ways, it’s also a compelling object lesson in how morally bankrupt it is to criminalize abortion.
It’s a hard movie to watch, especially toward the end when the ethical dilemmas really start to ramp up; but it’s done so well that it’s very easy to see how even the toughest subjects can, in the right hands, be turned into great art. Nobody is in favor of abortion; no one who supports a woman’s right to choose is sitting around actively hoping that more people get abortions; but the freedom to choose that procedure cannot be denied, and this film - though fictional - is a powerful illustration of why such a prohibition is indefensible.
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