Benicio del Toro (right) is marvelous as a beleaguered relief worker.
Not much was funny about the hideous Bosnian War. But there are genuine laughs in A Perfect Day, an assured, grim comedy that takes place in the final days of that conflict, which claimed so many lives in the 1990s. Based on a novel by Paula Farias, A Perfect Day was directed and co-written by the Spanish filmmaker Fernando León de Aranoa.
The focus is a group of international relief workers, whose gallows humor is a defense against the horrors they encounter as they go about their tasks. As the film begins, their leader, exhausted Mambrú (marvelous Benicio del Toro), faces a challenge: how to extract a corpse from a well. That bloated body is fouling a critical source of water, and it’s a potent symbol of the chaos that has engulfed the former Yugoslav republic.
Over the next 24 hours or so, Mambrú faces numerous setbacks as he tries to deal with the body. He is joined by French sanitation expert Sophie (Mélanie Thierry); his former lover Katya (Olga Kurylenko), who is evaluating the team’s work; nervous translator Damir (Fedja Stukan); and a man who goes simply as B (Tim Robbins). Perhaps more than the others, B seems to have internalized the paradoxes of relief work in Bosnia, and Robbins is slyly pragmatic in this role. The colleagues spend much of their time zooming down treacherous mountain roads in grimy utility vehicles.
Some of their difficulties with the cadaver are practical: Their rope breaks, and procuring more rope proves tricky. Another obstacle: the United Nations bureaucracy, whose officials provide a series of preposterous reasons these well-meaning NGO workers can’t remove a corpse from a well. Then there are the logistical challenges of trying to work amid armed conflict, among them terrifying minefields, as well as roads that have been arbitrarily closed by unsmiling men with guns.
One plot thread relates to a sad child whose soccer ball is stolen by a group of mean boys. It could be any schoolyard disagreement, except one of the youths brandishes a handgun. You can almost see something snap inside Mambrú as he watches this confrontation, a petty injustice in a region that has seen too much injustice. The boy asks to be taken to his home. There is rope there, he says, and another soccer ball. Mambrú agrees, and what happens next isn’t funny at all. It’s a devastating parable of the ethnic conflict in Bosnia — where, before the war, Muslims and Serbs lived side by side, and even intermarried.
With its wartime mix of absurdity and brutality, A Perfect Day evokes classic military satires like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. It also reminded me of Robert Altman’s MASH, with its ensemble of jaded, wisecracking medical professionals who likewise try to do good work amid carnage.
Watching A Perfect Day, I realized how few English-language movies there are about the Bosnian War. This is a good one, with a fine cast and a memorable story. See it, and remember the victims when you do.