An acclaimed film about abortion favours complexity over polemic. Psychologists on opposing sides of the debate talk to Fiona McCannabout their response to it.

'I found it to be a profoundly emotional and humbling experience," says psychologist Rosemary Troy after watching 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days, the film from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, which took the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year. "I didn't feel that my emotions were being manipulated at all through the film," adds Troy, a founder member of Psychologists for Freedom of Information in the run-up to the 1993 abortion referendum. "It was like a narrative of what happened, and you could feel a sense of reality about it . . . It was easy to become part of the collective consciousness, and in that way it was easy to empathise with the characters in it."

The characters to whom she refers are two Romanians, Otilia and Gabita, who set about procuring an abortion for the latter during the last days of Ceausescu's communist regime, when terminating pregnancies was illegal. Given the film's subject matter, it's hard to believe it won't stir up debate on this island, but, according to Dr Ruth Cullen, also a psychologist, who is a member of the Pro-Life Campaign's educational committee, Mungiu's film does not come down firmly on either side of the issue.

"I was wondering at the end whether it was a pro-life movie or a pro-choice movie," she says. "There were things that people on either side could point to. From a pro-choice perspective, it was terrible to see those girls undergoing that ordeal."

She adds, however, that his decision to include a shot of the aborted foetus could be the director's way of subtly articulating another perspective.

"It's interesting to think about why that was put in the movie and what the purpose of that was," she says. "Was it there to make us think about the humanity of the child?"

What both Cullen and Troy agree about is the sympathetic treatment of the two young protagonists, both of whom live through some harrowing, life-scarring moments over the course of the film, and who are forced to make difficult decisions that only serve to underline their humanity, regardless of how the viewer feels about their choices.

"Nobody could look at that movie and not have sympathy for those two girls," observes Cullen.

Given its treatment of what happens to women in a country where abortion is outlawed, comparisons with the current situation in Ireland are perhaps inevitable. Cullen, however, insists such analogies are misplaced.

"I would have some concern if people who were in favour of abortion tried to draw parallels between the oppressive nature of Ceausescu's regime and countries which are against abortion, because they're not the same thing," she says. "In Romania in the 1980s, opposition to abortion was based on political motives, so from that point of view it was very different to the way things are [in Ireland] now."

Troy disagrees, maintaining that some similarities can be found between the circumstances portrayed in Mungiu's film, and the situation in Ireland, particularly during the last decade.

"We did have a parallel situation here," she says. "We'd have to come out with our hands up and say that the State was disempowering women when it was forbidding the right to travel, so there is a very strong parallel there. But the film shows in glowing cinematic technicolour just how that need to control women's bodies and minds is ultimately such a dangerous thing."

She concedes, though, that such comparisons are limited. "It needs to be said that even, if we can see parallels in recent times with prohibitions on women's right to choose in certain circumstances to terminate a pregnancy in a clinical and sanitised environment, at least we can see that we did have the right to go on to the street and make our voices heard, and we have a right to change governments as well, if we don't like what they're doing."

The oppressive nature of life in Romania in the late 1980s is palpable in scenes where flickering lights and grim, empty streets all take on a threatening aspect for the two increasingly vulnerable young girls. For Troy, this kind of menace is the inevitable result of a regime which deprives people of some of their basic human rights.

"It was a very violent film, although we didn't see anyone shooting anyone, but it was about the most awful violence of all, the violence of oppression," she says.

Troy sees that violence as something that has a direct effect on the film's central characters. "There is also something portrayed about the internalisation of that violence, that it was such a part of that culture that these girls were prepared to perpetrate violence against themselves," she says. "That kind of abortion [performed on Gabita] was obviously life-threatening, and they had to put themselves into the hands of a very abusive, power-hungry backstreet abortionist in order to achieve their ends."

Gabita's desperation is clear, although Mungiu declines to have her explain it. For Cullen, however, the inference is that she is a young woman who finds herself with no alternative. "The onus on any society that professes to be pro-life is to put in place meaningful supports for women, so that they feel that they have an option," she says. "I wondered if this girl felt she had a choice, because I had a sense that she felt she didn't."

What's clear in the film is that Gabita's decision to terminate her pregnancy could have profound consequences if she is caught, and the tension built around the clandestine nature of the deed is at times almost unbearable. Is there a message contained about the suffering that ensues when a society criminalises abortion? Despite her own stance against abortion, Cullen feels that criminalising those who have abortions is unhelpful.

"I don't think there's any merit in getting into criminalising young girls who get into this situation based on desperation. I certainly wouldn't be advocating that," she says. "I do think compassion in the circumstances has to be extended to both the woman and the child."

With such a compassionate presentation of a complex subject, then, is there room for the debate about abortion in Ireland to move beyond the kind of polarisation that has characterised it in recent years?

"One of the problems that we face is that when we're debating something like abortion here, we need to be either for it or against it," says Troy. "In order to make our voices heard, we're pushed into polarised positions, and that doesn't leave an awful lot of room for debating how women could have terminations under certain circumstances in their own country. It would be great to be able to debate all the niceties, while at the same time recognising that people must have control of their own bodies. When you start taking control of people's bodies then you're heading towards taking control over their minds."

The film ends with Otilia vowing never to speak of what she and her friend have been through, as though wilfully consenting to silence in a society that has denied her a voice.

"I think she may feel that by not talking about it, it may help her forget about it, but I suppose what women often find when they try to forget about such situations is that they can't," says Cullen.

What we're left with as the credits roll on Mungiu's thought-provoking work is the sense that silence on the complex questions that abortion raises, like the silence vowed by Otilia, is not the answer.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days opens on Friday at the Irish Film Institute. It will be reviewed inThe Ticket on Friday