A Perfect Day

The good thing is that in this day and age of comic books and action blockbusters, someone is still going back to the Balkans in the 1990s, which is a goldmine in terms of filmmaking. Not everyone is able to work with it, but the range of possibilities and stories is endless. This time an unknown director from Spain chose a half-cynical road movie, half-black comedy and unfortunately, even with a great cast giving very good performances, we are more concerned with a well with a dead body and the nudging of individual characters than with the absurdity of the confrontation and its seriousness. The fabulous cinematography Alex Catalan is not enough on its own. (03/09/2016)

Specifics of international humanitarian aid or an absurd road-drama about the daily routine of humanitarian workers in the Balkans and their Don Quixote struggle with both officially bureaucratic windmills and common sense in a movie that masterfully and functionally balances on the edge of a serious portrayal, unforced honest emotions "reflection on society" and black cynical humor which ambulance crews take advantage of. Maybe it could have been a little bit two shorter, especially the detour sequence. (17/05/2016)

A very decent cast in a story that shows the war in the Balkans from a different perspective and reaffirmed my belief that the UN is practically useless. Unless you count overseeing massacres, that is. They're really great at watching things from the sidelines, and you can tell they've been practicing for quite a while. I enjoyed the absurdity around the well with undisguised cynicism. The film didn’t try to tug at my heartstrings (because the filmmakers were Spanish, not American). It put me in a good mood, even though it was about a serious matter. (09/04/2021)

A Spanish director decided to introduce us to one very difficult day in the Balkans and he got an international cast that is actually flawless. On top of that, all of the Balkans were immortalized in his native Spain and you cannot tell at all. A Perfect Day is simply a great movie. It shows again how meaningless the war in the Balkans was. Watching it reminded me of the movie No Mans Land, which has a similar message. The difference is that this movie approaches the situation from the point of view of the UN. I wonder if it is a coincidence that Benicio Del Toro managed to surprise me so nicely twice in the same year. You will not see such ordinary, genuine, but at the same time strongly human performances just anywhere. The Balkans are probably a magnet for similar stories. (31/12/2016)

"What are you doing in the war? Don't you have a charming loving wife at home?" - "Of course, I do, and that's exactly why I'm here." Some may have problems with the inclusion in the comedy genre due to the level of cynicism and dark humor that can be heard in demanding and stressful professions, where one commonly encounters human suffering. Personally, I found the mockery of the team members of a humanitarian organization, which is trying to provide drinking water for the local residents in a remote countryside at the end of the Bosnian war, to be fantastic. A Perfect Day is a small cinematic gem, where an excellent script full of clever dialogues and well-targeted lines meets a strong international cast. In the category of films dedicated to the bloody Balkan conflicts of the 90s, it certainly deserves one of the medal positions. The story is not about anything bigger than the search for a rope to pull a decomposing corpse out of a deep well. But where to get the rope when the locals need it for hanging, not to mention the fact that a proper corpse in the right well does highly meritorious work? It's a film full of biting irony attacking absurd regulations and the bureaucracy of the United Nations has a charm, for which I will give it five stars after careful consideration. Overall impression: 90%. (17/08/2021)