A Perfect Day

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. (12/31/2016)

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. (09/03/2016)

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. (04/09/2021)

I mainly thought about what it is actually possible to make a movie about. For example, the need to find a rope to pull a dead body out of a well, so as to prevent further contamination of the water and make it drinkable. This is a problem that most people don't have to deal with, but there are countries where it's a real pain. And this movie shows us a strange journey that I probably didn't quite get right. (01/05/2016)

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. (05/17/2016)