A Perfect Day – recommended at the London Film Festival #LFF

Follow the Granny…

Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins star in A Perfect Day, a film based on a book by Médicin Sans Frontières medic Paula Farias. It might be set amongst aid workers ‘somewhere in the Balkans’ in 1995 but it comes unexpectedly close to having a feel-good vibe. The atrocities of war are present, but the script by director Fernando Leon de Aranoa focuses tightly on the aid workers and the black humour they employ to get through their awful days. This focus works well. We are down on the ground, far away from the politicians and civilisation. A peace agreement may have been mooted in Geneva but nobody’s told the soldiers manning the local checkpoints and enjoying the power an AK47 provides.

Mambru (Del Toro) and B (Robbins) are veterans of many conflicts, used to dealing with soldiers and corpses in their jobs working for Aid Across Borders. Currently they are in Bosnia and trying to extract a body from a well before it pollutes a village’s water supply. Sophie (Melanie Thierry) is a young Frenchwomen on her first mission who arrives to work with the two men. We experience her shock at the day-to-day events that have become common-place to the two highly-grizzled veterans, whether calculating if a dead cow blocking the road has been mined or dealing with the UN soldiers who have very different priorities to the humanitarians.

Whether Mambru would really go to as much trouble as he does to help a little boy who’s lost his football seems unlikely; it is really just a way to lead in to more of the horrors of war. The appearance of an ex-lover and a happy resolution to a prisoner situation also seem a little too only-in-the-movies.

But sometimes drama can convey the gist of a situation better than documentary. You wouldn’t head to A Perfect Day for facts but it presents a believable reaction to a conflict zone experience. It shows the loss of innocence and the humour people use to exist in extreme conditions. It also demonstrates the farcical nature of bureaucracy and the futile nature of much that they helpfully attempt.

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