Word: bebe
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...Through the friend of a friend, Gabi has secured the name of someone who'll do the job: a man who calls himself Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). Gabi is afraid of meeting him, so Otilia is forced to go on the errand, after borrowing some money from her own boyfriend. Mr. Bebe is an imposing fellow: solidly built and radiating macho menace - a solemn thug who thinks he's Brando's Stanley Kowalski. When he shows up at the hotel room the girls have taken, Bebe seems open enough: he lays out the procedure in blunt declarative sentences, Yet every...
...coming herself for the first meeting, that his rancor is almost justifiable. She has also lied to him about how the extent of her pregnancy, which promotes the operation he's to perform from a punishable offense to a possible murder charge. What price, the girls wonder, will Mr. Bebe charge for the abortion? His answer astonishes and sickens them...
...Here you have a perfectly distilled three-character drama. Otilia is the smart one, the audience's surrogate, endangered by the rough Mr. Bebe and, even more so, by her dithery roommate. Gabi has constantly lied to Otilia or Bebe about almost everything: the meeting place, the money, certainly the extent of her pregnancy. She says it's two months, then three; you'll have to guess the actual time. Perhaps Gabi is afraid that no one will help her if she tells the truth; perhaps lying has got this pretty young woman this far, and, now, in this condition...
...just about every scene, no matter how long, is shot without cutting. (The nearly two-hour film has fewer than 70 shots.) That's often an enervating strategy, but here it works marvelously, either forcing two characters together as reluctant conspirators or isolating each in his or her predicament. Bebe's examination of Gabi, and his insertion of the syringe, is accomplished in one harrowing shot. There's a bustling scene, at the birthday party of Otilia's boyfriend's mother, that becomes a kind of tour de force - a 7-1/2min. take, with the careless gaiety...
...What doesn't happen, at any time, is that Gabi says, "OK, forget about it, Mr. Bebe, I'm having the baby." Proceeding with her pregnancy is no more an option for Gabi than an abortion was to the cheerful women with their initially unwanted fetuses in the American movies. It's as if life in Romania is so soul-destroying that Gabi doesn't want to bring another soul into it. Which may be the one thoughtful decision this immature young woman ever made...