A Perfect Day: DVD Review

A Perfect Day: DVD Review

Staying in a world that's been hit by problems, A Perfect Day's aiming for black humour in the Bosnian conflict.

A Perfect Day

The Spanish film features Benicio del Toro and Tim Robbins as part of a group of aid workers trying to move a corpse from a well in a conflict zone. It's an easy task in theory - take out the thing that's corrupting the surrounding well-being of the people (an allegory not lost on the viewers) but the amount of red-tape and problems it poses for del Toro's Mambru and Robbins' B would be funny if they weren't so ludicrous.

Fortunately, director Fernando Leon de Aranoa mines the gallows humour to reasonably exasperating effect throughout; and while the idea that Olga Kurylenko's top ranking aid official would head out among them stretches credibility somewhat, the flashes of the horrors of war that are interspersed throughout ground the film in a horrific reality that never quite goes away.

The one day to go storyline for del Toro's Mambru may have been done before with the likes of M*A*S*H but not once does A Perfect Day's sedentary pace through conflict lose any of its resonance as it seeks not to lecture but to present a sobering reality that aid workers have to face.