After making its world premiere at Cannes, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days made its Romanian debut on 1 June 2007, at the Transilvania International Film Festival.

Romanian Communist Party General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu enacted the abortion law Decree 770 in 1966 in order to increase the birth rates in the country.

[15] Author Dominique Nasta judged the film to be an accurate portrait of the oppression, and on the poor state of the economy of the Socialist Republic of Romania in the later days of Ceaușescu's regime.

[22] Mungiu, himself a decrețel (born in the time of Decree 770),[11] wanted to create a serious film focusing on the true story, which still affected him and felt tragic more than 15 years later.

[25] As he continued writing, he stated pushing a political point was not so much a factor in editing, as he opted not to delete potential scenes if they felt credible, asking "Would this reasonably have happened, and does it make sense to the story to keep it?

[22] In one scene, the aborted fetus is visible on screen for approximately 14 seconds, the length it took for the actors to deliver the dialogue, with Mungiu opting not to edit out the shot since it "was part of the story".

[38] Scholar Florentina C. Andreescu opined the two female protagonists share emotional loyalty, while in the wake of Mr. Bebe's abuses, Otilia becomes increasingly suspicious of Adi.

[39] Professor László Strausz said that the film emphasises the ways that Romania's abortion laws inflicted humiliations on the protagonists, particularly between people of differing authority and sex.

[41] Academic Claudiu Turcuș remarked that the dinner scene, where the characters look down on some careers and act as if smoking in front of one's elders is disrespectful, shows how regressive they are.

[39] Turcuș instead interpreted the scene as Mr. Bebe presenting himself as the "new man", sharing the women's legal peril and an openness to sexuality, while in fact being "the communist brute".

[47] Jump Cut writer Constantin Parvulescu stated "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days provides an astute balance of ostalgia and anti-communist memorial".

[52] Mungiu conceded that such similarities were accidental, and that once he appreciated the potential analogy during production, the filmmakers added a more focused view of Otilia to reveal her stress.

[56] Surveying the photography, academic Ileana Jitaru found "simple, austere and realistic compositions in which the black humour is a stylistic means of anchoring the theme(s)".

[59] Critic Peter Debruge declared the style "the antithesis of your well-lit, elegantly shot Hollywood movies – or the locally made films of Mungiu's childhood".

[24] Journalist Steven Boone said that while the film was well reviewed for "its bracing drabness, its ugliness, its lack of style", he believed it was "beautiful and stylized", because "it is alive and piercingly present-tense".

[10] Aside from reflecting the length of the fictional pregnancy, the 4-3-2 form of the title creates the impression of rushed countdown reinforcing the thriller genre aspects, Gradea wrote.

[66] Filmmaker Sorin Avram documented the caravan tour through Focșani, Petroșani, Călărași and other communities, and interviewed some of the audience of 17,584 people, who described it as shocking and disturbing.

The site's critical consensus reads "Featuring gut-wrenching performances from Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu, 4 Months is a gripping portrayal of life in Communist Romania".

[79] Time magazine's Richard and Mary Corliss described it as a "gripping, satisfying film" and particularly noted the use of minimalism and "formal rigor" as defining aesthetic characteristics.

He added that the film shares a number of characteristics with other productions of the New Romanian Cinema, namely: "long takes, controlled camera and an astonishing ear for natural dialogue".

[81] Peter Bradshaw remarked on the sharpness of Otilia and the apparent naiveté of Găbița, but considered this is how their crisis could have affected them, and praised the film as "a masterpiece of intimate desperation".

[59] In Empire, Damon Wise gave it five stars, positively reviewing the cinematography, colour scheme, and the depiction of the black-market terror created when something is outlawed.

[89][n 4] Wilson observed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days displayed the aborted fetus, comparable to the U.S. anti-abortion movement's use of such images, but argued the film was closer to pro-choice ideology in its focus on the law's harm to women.

[45] In the Canadian feminist magazine Herizons, reviewer Maureen Medved judged 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days to approximate a horror film in depicting the abuses that women suffer when abortion is illegal.

[92] In The Australian Feminist Law Journal, Fiona Jenkins interpreted the story as a morally ambiguous argument that safe abortion services should be allowed, but that Otilia telling Găbița they will never talk about the matter reflects her "trauma not only of what she has undergone but what she has done".

[100] Mungiu later said the omission and subsequent furor brought the picture substantial publicity, and that the experience taught him that critics and festival juries have differing tastes from the Academy.

[102] Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times remarked the nominees of 2011 reflected the change, displaying unorthodox and challenging subject matter such as youth violence (In a Better World), incest by rape (Incendies) and particularly torture (Dogtooth).

[104] Mungiu explained that "the golden age of Romania" is a term used nationally for Ceaușescu's final nine years in power, though he said people then suffered "shortages and hardship".

[105] In 2009, he released a single film called Tales from the Golden Age, following 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in depicting the Ceaușescu era and starring Vlad Ivanov.

[106] His next film, Beyond the Hills (2012), similarly depicted Romanian extremism, and Mungiu was inspired to make the cinematic adaptation after seeing the stage version in New York while promoting 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.