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. He argued that class and generational conflicts are presented in the dinner party scene, where the characters have more food than lower classes, discuss social issues such as conscription into the Romanian Armed Forces, and treat Otilia as representative of the "new generation" that does not appreciate what it has been given. 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. Ovidius University author Ileana Jitaru credited the film for reconstructing "an entire communist class ideology which divided society into 'working class people' and 'intellectuals'". Jitaru specifically cited the dinner scene, where the conversation makes much of the divide between those with university degrees and those with none. The attendees boast about belonging to the middle class, and make denigrating comments about Otilia's rural origins.