A Perfect Day
- Review Date: January 15, 2016
- Rated: R
- Genre: Drama
- Release Year: 2016
- Running Time: 106 minutes
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What parents need to know
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that A Perfect Day is a drama about aid workers in the Balkans in 1995. Though the country is a war zone, violence is more hinted at than shown. The worst is a dead, bloated body in a well (the characters spend the entire movie trying to get it out). A hanged corpse is also briefly shown, dead cows in the road are potentially used to hide land mines, and a teen boy brandishes a gun. Language is strong ("f--k," "s--t") but infrequent; characters also talk about sex, but it's nothing too graphic, and they drink whiskey in one sequence. Though the movie is about aid workers, it doesn't really encourage viewers to choose the same path; the characters seem burnt out, doing the job more to avoid things than to help out. Still, the portrait the film paints is an interesting one.
What's the story?
In the Balkans in 1995, a group of aid workers -- including Mambru (Benicio Del Toro), "B" (Tim Robbins), and Sophie (Melanie Thierry) -- do their best to pitch in. Local translator Damir (Fedja Stukan) helps. Today's task is to remove a grossly overweight corpse from a village well, but when their old rope breaks, they embark upon what turns into a day-long odyssey around the country in an attempt to finish the job. To complicate matters, Mambru's ex-lover, Katya (Olga Kurylenko), joins the group -- and they also rescue a young boy, Nikola (Eldar Residovic), from a band of gun-wielding teens. Things come to a head when, just before dark, they come upon a trap -- possible land mines -- in the road. Can this perfect day get any worse?
Is it any good?
This low-key drama is at its best when it paints a picture of a specific place and time and a culture of expats at work; it avoids overt hysteria as well as punishing horrors-of-war messages. A PERFECT DAY isn't necessarily a great movie -- there's not much at stake, humor is sparse, and it can't help feeling a little heavy from time to time -- but thanks to its compressed time frame (just 24 hours) and the cast's strong performances, it's quite interesting.
Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa (Mondays in the Sun) gives us a snapshot of a certain kind of person, a kind of misfit who doesn't like going home -- or even having a home. The job is horrible, dangerous, and perhaps not even that rewarding, but there's still an odd kind of exotic allure to it. More than the horrors of war or the politics of war, it's this job, and these characters, that make the movie work.
Families can talk about...
Families can talk about A Perfect Day's violence. How does it depict the horrors of war without showing graphic bloodshed and gore? How does it use violence to suggest things?
What is an aid worker? What appear to be the pros and cons of this particular job? Does it look appealing?
How did you feel about the teen boy with the gun?
Why is the "B" character so preoccupied with sex? What does sex mean to him?
Movie details
| Theatrical release date: | January 15, 2016 |
| Cast: | Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins, Olga Kurylenko |
| Director: | Fernando Leon de Aranoa |
| Studio: | IFC Films |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Run time: | 106 minutes |
| MPAA rating: | R |
| MPAA explanation: | language including some sexual references |
About Our Rating System
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