The latest in an extraordinary run of quality films from Romania, Cristian Mungiu’s outstanding 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days won the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year. It was the first Palme winner for as long as I can remember to have been greeted with universal approval from the critics, and it’s not hard to see why: this is an exceptional, masterful piece of film-making that combines social realism, political comment and nail-biting tension.

Set in 1987, at the tail end of the Ceausescu regime, the story plays out in a sullen grey-tinged half-light. Complexions are stripped of any hint of health by the sallow glare of sodium lights. The state’s suffocating hold on every aspect of the lives of its populace has resulted in a thriving black market.

Everything is available if you know where to look: soap, shampoo, contraceptive pills, Kent cigarettes (themselves a form of currency) are all dispensed by shady-looking men with holdalls who loiter in foyers and corridors. And, as the pregnant Gabita (played by Laura Vasiliu) and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) are discovering, there is a black market for abortion as well.

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We join the girls in the room they share in a student dormitory. A pair of goldfish float listlessly in a small tank on the table, desultory snowflakes drift past the window. The friends’ preparations for the day include procuring cash and booking a hotel room, but it is not until the film is well underway that we learn what these arrangements are for.

By this point, it has also become clear that it is not sullen, pretty Gabita who is the heart of this film but her smart, unflappable friend Otilia.

It is Otilia who has to coax a room from an openly hostile hotel receptionist, Otilia who has to meet with Mr Bebe, the man who claims that he might be able to "help" her friend. And it is to Otilia’s face that the camera repeatedly returns as the gravity of the deal that Gabita is forced to strike dawns on them both. The repellent Mr Bebe lays out the stark facts along with his makeshift medical equipment. The stakes are high – all three face prison if caught; the risks to Gabita are far worse. The cost of the treatment, says Mr Bebe, secure in the knowledge that the girls have no choice, is more than just money.

The cinematographer Oleg Mutu favours long shots and the kind of framing that places a consumptive-looking vase of artificial flowers in centre shot while the action takes place elsewhere. His instinctive, hand-held camerawork complements the naturalistic performances perfectly. His restraint – particularly in an extraordinary dinner party scene in which a quietly desperate Otilia is clearly fearing the worst for Gabita – is perhaps his greatest talent.

But of all the tools that Cristian Mungui has to work with, it is Marinca’s Otilia who is the most valuable. She’s an incredible young actress who effortlessly carries this remarkable film.

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