4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days *****

"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" is a dark and gripping drama, masterfully written, directed, and acted, covering one day in the life of a woman who helps a friend in the Romania of 1987. Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) has agreed to help her college roommate Gabriela, or "Gabita" (Laura Vasiliu), obtain an illegal abortion. The film dogs Otilia all day, as she gathers money, arranges, connives, lies, squeezes in dinner with her boyfriend's parents, and generally holds things together for Gabita, whose shortcomings become increasingly apparent.

It's a tense and exhausting day. Director/writer Cristian Mungiu stays with Otilia for virtually the entire film, with an impassive, still camera that records her movements almost like a documentary. There is no music; only the superbly-captured sounds of life: voices, footsteps, running water, the train. As Otilia negotiates with clerks and black marketers, and worse, it's clear that she has learned how to survive in an all-encompassing bureaucracy. Always ready with the quick lie that explains everything, she is nevertheless the most honest of friends. As events unfold, we see that the same cannot be said of Gabita, who has put herself and Otilia at great risk.

Mungiu's carefully-crafted script draws us into Otilia's world, and we soon are worrying about her worries. The dinner party scene is a marvel of suspense - will Gabrita call? - overlaid with personal and professional shop talk from, ironically enough, doctors. Their conversation gives us another window into Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, where anything more than potatoes and polenta is a feast, and careers are careful negotiations of the state order. All the while the camera is focused on Otilia in the middle of the frame, and the others only partly visible on either side of her. We feel her torment and distraction, and when the phone does ring, it's a jolt. And when no one answers the phone - it is a party, after all - it's unbearable.

There are other moments like the dinner party phone; details that we worry about because we know that Otilia thinking about them, but which may not have any significance. Mungiu even holds a shot too long, way too long, and we start to wonder what's going on. It seems interminable, the waiting and the wondering, but that is exactly what Otilia is feeling at that point.

The acting is uniformly natural and believable. Laura Vasiliu is excellent as the weak friend who asks too much of everyone but herself. Vlad Ivanov is chilling as the back alley abortionist. But this is Anamaria Marinca's film; her quietly forceful performance ranks with the very best.

Unrated. 113 minutes. Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu. Produced by Cristian Mungiu and Oleg Mutu. Cinematography by Oleg Mutu. Edited by Dana Bunescu. Principal actors: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean. Distributed in the U.S. by IFC Films. In Romanian with English subtitles.