Um Dia Perfeito

"A Perfect Day" brings us back in 1995 and offers an interesting point of view to the last days of the Bosnian war.

The movie reveals a day of an international team of aid workers. It is a drama with a pinch of black humor. The movie shows the horror of the war, the pain of the local people and alludes the cruelty of religious intolerance. Most importantly it reminds the imperfection of the society and the black spot from the European history that should never be forgotten.

More than 20 years later, although I am also living on the Balkans, I still cannot figure out why this war started. A total madness that led to some many casualties and losses for everyone involved...

The music is great and so is the cast of "A Perfect Day". I always enjoy watching actors like Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins. Mélanie Thierry, Fedja Stukan and the young boy Eldar Residovic also played well. Olga Kurylenko, who you may remember as a Bond girl, performed excellently. Btw it is a bit sad that no matter what she does the "Bond" label will always be with her.

I just saw a Spanish film that probably enjoyed a limited release in the U.S., although the dialogue is mostly in English – A Perfect Day. In the film, a team of aid workers faces a problem, a corpse is contaminating a well that provides the only potable water in the region, since two other wells are surrounded by mines and cannot be used. The film follows the group as they try to obtain a rope to lift the body out of the well, and examines the difficulties of executing such a small task in a war zone, in this case, the waning days of the Bosnian conflict.

The film resonated with me on several levels. First, of course, I live in the Balkans now, so the language and setting was familiar. (Now I know "konopac" means rope and "bunar" means well!) The landscape in some of the scenes was amazing, and makes me curious to see more of Bosnia now. Second, the cast itself is multinational, reflecting the multinational character of international assistance efforts. This is familiar to me too, since I work in a multinational OSCE Mission. The civilian-military interaction was all too familiar, as were the many scenes with Stryker armored personnel carriers, a common sight during my time in Iraq.

I thought the film provided a very good feel for the frustrations of development work in a war setting. In addition, the dialogue and acting were great. The impressive cast features American Tim Robbins, Spaniard Benicio del Toro, Ukrainian Olga Kurylenko (who was a Bond girl in A Quantum of Solace), Frenchwoman Melanie Thierry, and Bosnian Fedja Stukan. At one point, one of the characters, seeing Olga Kurylenko for the first time, mutters under his breath, "And so where is she from – Models without Borders?" The sub-plot involving the young Bosnian boy, Nikola, who attaches himself to the team, is also great.

This is a powerful film that is authentic in its treatment. I recommend it.

Spanish physician Paula Farias (Doctors without Borders) wrote a novel based on her experience in the Balkans and the present film (an English spoken Spanish production) represents the cinematographic transposition of her work.

It's a lovely movie with no plot: it just narrates how common people could spend a day (actually a couple of days) trying to help, in the middle of events enormously bigger than them.

There are no heroes here, only experience. No guilt, just sorrow. No right way to do things besides thinking and wishing to care. And then there is fate, of course.

A (good) way to look at the world.

This film tells the daily lives of several aid workers in an armed conflict zone in the Balkans. They have to extract a corpse from a well, but are faced with multiple logistical and bureaucratic challenges.

"A Perfect Day" may look ridiculous and infuriating from the outside, as it tells a story of ridiculous bureaucracy. So if the common goal is to help the people in a war zone, why are there so many restrictions and hurdles to helping others? Well, my workplace is exactly like that, do I can relate to every single minute of it.

The subplot about the local boy Nikola is touching, as it provides a glimpse of hope for humanity - sometimes real help is from unofficial sources!

Foreign films rarely get the proper recognition in the English speaking world, be that the US or Great Britain. Only recently have foreign films been allowed to compete in categories other than Best Foreign film at the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes still relegate them to the Foreign Film category. If we look at the box-office results we see an even more drastic condition. The highest grossing foreign film of all time in the US is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which made $127 million, something the small Pitch Perfect film achieved in 2011 which much less effort. But being shunned from awards and shut out from the box office doesn't mean foreign films don't have quality, just look at the great Italian films Cinema Paradiso or Life is Beautiful, or at Jacques Tati's film repertoire, Almodovar and Amenabar in Spain, Michael Haneke in Austria, and the great master Miyazaki and Kurozawa in Japan. This brings us to A Perfect Day the newest film from Spanish director Fernando Leon de Aranoa. The film is made by Spaniards, told in English, and takes place in the Balkans, a very curious mix, which nonetheless produced one of the best films of the year.

A Perfect Day tells the story of a group of aid workers working in the midst of the Balkan crisis in 1995. We have Mambru (Benicio del Toro) the group's unofficial leader and head of security, the wisecracking B (Tim Robbins), the rookie Sophie (Melanie Thierry), and their translator Damir (Fedja Stukan). The film opens with Mambru trying to take a dead body out of a town well. It's the body of an obese man, which later symbolizes of the dreading weight that the group is trying to relieve without help from the UN or the locals, all trying to help a country they barely know. The story intensifies when Mambru picks up a lost local kid named Nikola (Eldar Residovic) who had his soccer ball stolen by bullies, and finally Mambru's ex shows up (Olga Kurylenko) to evaluate the situation in the Balkans. Essentially the movie is a road-trip through the Bosnian countryside, letting you catch a glimpse of the situation that the locals lived in (and still live in today).

What most surprised me about A Perfect Day was the incredible balance it has. When touching upon the subject of war, it is very easy to be extreme. Extreme in the sense that you show a gore- fest and lots of blood and death, or an extreme where you try to cover up everything and have only descriptions from characters of passed events. A Perfect Day achieves its goal of brutalizing war with simple acts, like when a kid pulls out a gun when fighting over a ball, or when a store-owner can't sell his rope because he has them reserved for hangings, or when a shy adolescent watches over an empty warehouse, but is spurred with hope for protecting its flag. It is these little details littered in the story that really give you the sense of suffering and dread that can be seen in times of war.

In terms of the acting, it was also very well balanced. You had Robbins as the comic relief, and Del Toro as the speaker of truth. Both actors give an incredible performance, with visible yet admirable improvisation. Meanwhile the supporting cast also is incredibly solid. The more known names of Olga Kurylenko and Melanie Thierry do a fine job, but the surprises here were in the local actors: Fedja Stukan and Eldar Residovic who both give incredibly raw and layered performances that have us longing to console them, yet you never once pity them in the undignified sense.

Then the cinematography is also very simple, but yet contains a few flourishes and Director of Photography Alex Catalan (Marshland, Unit 7) gives the movie a cold almost wintery look that makes the message and harshness of the story fall sharper and hit you harder.

Finally, the script was incredibly witty and quick. The character development in the two hours of running time is so smooth you barely notice it, but when comparing the characters at the beginning and at the end of the movie you see how subtle Leon de Aranoa was (especially with the character Sophie). The dialogue is absolutely delicious, with the best being quirky exchanges between B and Mambru.

In the end this film, again, exemplifies that "there is life outside the US" and that foreign cinema (in particular Spanish cinema) is growing and cultivating fresh crops of new artists. And in a world of war and sorrow, art is sometimes the only window of hope.