Female Bonding: The Female Body as Site in 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (2007)
The ‘female spirit’ as a shared construct has been discussed often under the idea of mother-daughter relationship or sisterhood. Friendship between women outside filial boundaries is pulled into debates on homosocial and lesbian bonding (Carson, Dittmar and Welsch 350). Karen Hollinger in her book, In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films (1998) studies the complexity of the female bonding through a category of films she terms as ‘female friendship films.’ She explores and lays out the multiple dimensions of female friendship – the ontogenesis of the feminine space, its causality, functions, and impairments in filmic texts. She borrows from fictional literature to classify female friendship in films into the ‘sentimental, manipulative, political, erotic, and social friendships.’ In her parsing, she refrains from idealizations and comparisons of female bonds and aligns with Pat O’Connor (1992) that ‘women’s real life relationships are, in fact, complex constructs involving conflict, anxiety, personal pain, as well as psychological and social rewards’ (Hollinger: 23). Alluding to the complexity of female friendship, I wish to undertake a critical reading of ‘female friendship’ in 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (2007). I argue that their bodies, which involve in illegal abortion and extorted sex, emerge as the epicenter for oppression and its concomitant defensive resistance enacted by both lead female characters in 4 months. Elizabeth Grosz (1990: 81) also asserts that the body is pivotal for ‘relations of power and resistance to be played out’.[1] So when faced with patriarchal aggression directed at their bodies, the two different women Gabita and Otilia come together to help themselves. I will make interspersed observations on the kind of bearing state violence, female sensitivity, and binary spaces have on the woman’s body.
Female friendship narrative
The film opens with two young college girls, in their room (space), preparing to leave somewhere. Set in the late 1980s Romania under the repressive communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, the film narrates an episode in the lives of two friends, Gabita and Otilia. That Gabita is anxious about her abortion which is to take place in a few hours, is not revealed to the audience until later. As they get ready, Gabita requests Otilia ‘to give her a hand’ at removing the rubber table cloth from the desk. The placement of this first request in the opening scene acts as a sign for the weighty requests that ensue. Otilia, despite no obligations, gets herself to do Gabita an escalating list of grave favors: arrange some money, help book a hotel room, meet with a black market abortionist, Mr. Bebe, later submits to his extortion and has sex (as payment) with him to perform Gabita’s abortion and finally disposes the dead fetus. All throughout this narrative progression, their friendship unveils and materializes into a bond of mutuality, fundamentally defined by their shared bodily experiences in the ‘public’ and ‘private’ sphere.
Bodies and Spaces
The film sketches the female body in the context of Gabita’s pregnancy, its termination and Otilia’s surrogate collaboration with the same. Though the two female bodies are different in their literal physical states, the visibility and treatment of both bodies correlate with one another. The female body in the film acts as a signifier to the plight of Romanian women under the control of the paternalist state. Under the guise of building a ‘strong’ socialist state, the Ceausescu regime’s pronatalist policies ‘brought the state directly into its citizens’ bodies and their intimate relations’ (Kligman 234). By banning abortion and instituting state surveillance of women’s reproductive health status, the nation-state forcefully encroached itself upon the female space and expulsed the female body into the public sphere. I will examine this signification process to implicate the breeding grounds for female bonding as based on the control dynamics of materiality.
The mise-en-scene and camerawork in the film constructs the body in relation to spaces. The ‘kino-eye’ is at work in 4 months. It looms around their ‘lives as it is’ (Michelson 41). This objective ambling cannot help but turn their bodies as the cynosure. As the girls go about matters, the camera eye serves to document untampered representations of their bodies in diversified spaces. The film, then, portrays the meshing of corporeality and subjectivity with a realist apprehension of the thwarted female agency over their bodies under the regime.
Maternity and femininity
Gabita’s body, though implied as pregnant, does not incur gravidness. The pregnant body is free of maternal allusions. Instead, the film allows the femininity of the body to play out itself. In this case, one can deduce that Gabita’s subjectivity is under the attack of state surveillance. Also, in the act of reclaiming agency over her own body – to terminate the fetus — she runs the risk of state punishment. This conflict between her understanding of her own body and its ‘projects’ foreshadows the split subjectivity as Iris Marion Young points out: “Pregnant consciousness is animated with a double intentionality: my subjectivity splits between awareness of myself as body and awareness of my aims and projects” (2005: 51-52).
Gabita, in this state of double-awareness, appears selfish and ‘stupid’, especially in regard to requesting Otilia to do most of the difficult errands. This two-sided subjectivity is clearly previewed in the opening scene. Gabita, conscious of her pregnancy, is preparing for her abortion. She is visibly nervous and shows signs of indecisiveness – packing and unpacking the rubber-made tablecloth; and whether to bring along her study notes. She seems to be overwhelmed by her survival instinct that she overlooks the obstacles Otilia might come to face and leaves her with no forewarning.
Visibility of the female body
Though the film makes a subtle ideological critique of the Romanian state by revealing the female body, it does not reveal the male body; even when it asserts itself with primordial authority in ‘sexual bartering’. The film does not show us the ‘rape’ in narrative action, but it is implied when Gabita’s and Otilia’s lower torso – inguinal regions are revealed. The visibility of the female body portrays the two friends as victims. In the same vein, the male body is invisible – other than his threatening ways, he is not ‘caught in the act.’ The bathroom is another space marked by intimacy and female ownership of body. Gabita, Otilia and the aborted fetus are exposed in the bathroom. However, when Mr. Bebe uses the same bathroom, the male body enjoys no exposition. Whether the visibility of the male body could have added to the demonization of the masculine state or its invisibility comments on the realistic situation of power dynamics is debatable. Nevertheless, the oppressor walks away clean, leaving the girls distraught and disgusted by their helplessness.
Surveillance: the state and its aides
Otilia as the main protagonist of the film is the friend of the pregnant body. Her body is more visible than Gabita’s. The camera follows Otilia through hallways, alleys, streets, staircases, buses and almost everywhere but maintains a watchful distance. The director Cristian Mungiu explains this choice to signify the effect of state surveillance on the woman’s body (Porton 36). So it can be observed that Otilia’s body stood in for both of them in the entirety of the signifying practice. Otilia is the one, out of the two girls, who is stalked by hegemonic masculinity. The film constructs these meetings between the female body and the paternalist state at various occasions. The first meeting occurs on the bus (public transport run by the state) – although it is less conspicuous. There’s a subaltern language; a medium born out of the oppressive layer that encompasses gender and to an extent class in public spaces. Otilia’s covert request for a ‘spare’ ticket to fellow passengers and the quiet help lent by a male passenger underscores this. Though 4 months establishes this point subtly without much emphasis as there are no reaction shots or conversation succeeding the ticket verification, one of the ticket inspectors scans Otilia, and her suffocation in public space is visible. Similar interactions with state ‘watchdogs’ follows when Otilia is forced to bend, comply and is interrogated by hotel receptionists at both hotels – Unirea and Tineretului.[2] The film carefully and accurately plots the representatives of the oppressive state as diversified and omnipresent in the public sphere. The exchange between Otilia and the callous receptionist at Unirea involves her deriding Otilia with the question – “Don’t you understand Romanian? It seems you don’t!” The receptionist questions Otilia’s dubious statehood as if she had prior information about Otilia and Gabita’s plan to breach state law. The hostel warden, ticket inspectors, hotel receptionists, police officers, passersby and finally Mr. Bebe, all appear to be willing participants in the violation of the female body, while the State is only a sanctioning agent.
Though Mr. Bebe as a black alley (back alley or black market?) abortionist is an outlaw and can be considered to be on the other side of the camp, his mode of ‘assistance’ epitomizes male sexual violence, drawing him very close to the State’s patriarchal policies. The events in the hotel room underline his abetting with State’s prejudiced treatment of its female subjects. After he extorts the girls to bed with him, he dons the cap of a medical pro. He examines Gabita’s body and inquires about her pregnancy with the carried over tone of authority. The blocking and props in this scene participate in a signification process. Gabita is lying on the bed, with her legs kept apart. Mr.Bebe is seated beside her and on the side of the camera (spectator’s view), the audience sees a small pile of papers that Gabita intends to study from for an exam later that week. It can be inferred that this juxtaposition carries a correlation with the Ceausescu’s campaign that “subjected women of childbearing age to state control of their reproductive lives”. Women in Romania during that period who were working in or attending state institutions, were given at least annual, and in some places, trimesterly gynecological exams to verify that their reproductive health was satisfactory (Kligman 243).
Another significant metaphorical trace that Mungiu constructs in the film is the appearance of the ambulance in many scenes. It first passes by Otilia when she’s on a street looking Mr. Bebe. It reappears outside the hotel room when Otilia comes back to check on Gabita. The ambulance as a signifier – acts as a ‘vehicle’ for state surveillance of female bodies. State-sponsored intrusion of private space affects the girls equally even if only one of them needed an abortion. The two friends are then coerced to entangle their bodies into a mesh of physical and psychical violence. They battle with their subjectivity – from the outside and the inside, and with the body as the frame of reference, they grapple with its psychical, sexual, social and representational connotations (Grosz 381). The traumatized friends move towards themselves and their bodies after a direct encounter with sexual violence. This movement towards the body is inevitable as Jane Kilby points out here: “..[V]iolence figures as speaking directly to and through the body: a brutal yet intimate language, the truth of which is always understood by the body (2008: 101).”
The girls meet with unwanted pregnancy, ‘rape’ and abortion – exponents of violence that speak to the body. With this shared bodily consciousness they come closer to each other.
Conclusion
Otilia’s emotional journey – visible through her body language – from the moment she has sex with Mr.Bebe to the time she sits back with Gabita in the end goes through a transition of its own. Her anger and exasperation turns towards Gabita whose lies and assumptions, according to her, brought them to that position. Before she leaves Gabita by herself, Otilia opens a cigarette pack to pick the last one. Gabita requests for it and she gives it away. In spite of Gabita’s flaws, Otilia seems to have concern for her friend. Her shaken and agitated state is more or less the same until she reaches Adi’s (her boyfriend) house. Her experience there, however, seems to have different effect. It overturns whatever resentment she had towards Gabita and engenders a subconscious female bond. The sermon she hears — of masculine sense of respect (about her smoking) — and her argument with Adi seem to alienate her from him (and men), at least to the extent that she no longer feels guilty about her role in the abortion. It is accentuated further during her travel back to the hotel and while she’s on the streets. All dark alleys and empty roads constantly remind of her possession: her own body (whose salability she just realized) and its bi-product (in the form of a dead fetus). Both practically owned by the patriarchal order. This in turn brings her closer to Gabita. Otilia in her altercation with Adi mentions that if she were pregnant it would be Gabita who would be willing to help her and not him.
Otilia’s close collaboration with Gabita’s abortion entitles her as a surrogate. They both go through experiences of that night with the same intensity. The two women unite, creating a female bond to deal with their loss of rights. In ‘sisterly surrogacy’ one woman carries the baby for her friend – they engage in a ‘joint enterprise’ (Marshall 129). Otilia, similarly, forms an alliance with Gabita to help her execute bodily enactments. When the friends sit on the floor over-looking at the fetus – Otilia’s ambiguous appraisal of her own ‘pregnant’ body and their joint effort in bringing out the fetus, frames them as the ‘bearers’ of that fetus – the fetus belonged to both of them – to their bodies.
The long take of Gabita and Otilia seated in the restaurant emphasizes this partnership. Otilia asks her friend to not bring up the events of that night ever again and gazes at Gabita. The film ends with her briefly turning to look at the camera – at the spectators. The silence between them seals their bond and is telling of their successful accomplishment of re-gaining control over the body. Otilia’s brief confrontation with the camera reads as her defiant confrontation with the ‘eye’ of the masculine state that the camera symbolized in the film at large.
[1] Elizabeth Gross (sic) makes that argument by concluding from Lyotard, Irigary, Deleuze, and Foucault‘s discourse on the body. See The Body of Signification.
[2] The film’s gendered construction of oppression is nuanced and non-judgmental – female persons as agents of the State do not differ from the male counterparts in fulfilling objectives of state control. It could also be reflective of the common opinion of Elena Ceausescu as more brutal than her husband. (Renne 5) Therefore, it is important for me to distinguish between these women and the female body entrenched in the polemic, I put forth between agents and subjects of patriarchy.
