There’s been a recent spate of comedies about this subject in America, including Juno and Knocked Up. Do you think 4 Months is an appropriate treatment of it?
I’ve made a lot of comedy in my life before this film, but it never appeared to me, in connection with the story I was trying to tell, that a comedy — it’s not about humor here — that a comedy would have been appropriate. I wanted to be realistic, and I thought that this is the way I want to speak about this now. And this should be generating and stimulating people to think about something important. For all of us to have our own opinion, this is what I want. It’s not like telling people what to do.
There are some funny moments in the movie, though.
I don’t have anything against humor. But you know, there’s a huge difference between humor and comedy. Comedy lacks — from my perspective, comedy is something that creates laughter lacking realism and placing the discourse of the film from the beginning on a very different tone. My main concern was to be very believable, very faithful to the story, and to present in a very realistic way both the society and the period in which this happened and this specific story.
A comedy also implies a happy ending, or at least an ending of some sort, and you don’t really have either one in your film.
Because I don’t have much to do with this kind of filmmaking, at least not for this project. So we never aimed to please the audience, we wanted to tell a very true story in a very direct and honest way. Assuming from the beginning that people might be displeased with what they considered to be the truth.
My editor saw Juno and 4 Months in the same week and noticed that in both films orange Tic Tacs play a prominent role. Can you explain that uncanny coincidence?
Orange Tic Tacs?
Yes. Otilia buys them in the commissary.
Unless, you know, pregnant women crave orange Tic Tacs, I don’t have any other explanation.
