A Perfect Day (2015 )

 

Somewhere in the Balkans around 1995 , a group of Aid workers seek high and low to get a rope to haul out a corpse that has been deliberately flung into a well. This forms the skeleton for  the story of A Perfect Day .While this is strictly not a foreign language film , it is the English movie debut of Spanish director , Fernando de Leon de Aronoa .           

                                             

While the plot sounds quite simple , it slowly meanders into various sub plots that eventually connect back to the main plot. Mambru , the protagonist , is an NGO aid worker working in a conflict zone in the Balkans. His team comprises of B - a wild middling character , Sophie - a fresher and a local interpreter Damir. They are soon joined by Katya , an assessment expert who is an ex flame of Mambru`s and Nikola , young teenage orphan.

Their quest for the Holy Grail , or in this case, the long rope takes them through various situations which are quite endemic to a war zone. A dead cow placed in the middle of the road meant to make them divert and hit a landmine , a guy sitting at an outpost refusing to give the rope from a flag post as lowering it could trigger a war ,the boy Nikola promising to give them a rope which is at his house and also , incidentally , used to leash in a ferocious mongrel - all these anecdotes keep the film moving at a decent pace.

Another touching scene is when the protagonists chance upon a group of Bosnian militia who  have lined up a group of people , who have their hands up and likely waiting to be shot. This , in spite of cessation of hostilities being effected.

Our group finally manages to get a rope and return back to the well just to find UN troops stopping them since , with the cease fire being effected , they would need permission from the local civil authorities to do anything.. Very frustrating indeed , after all those efforts.

But then comes the silver lining to the cloud at the climax. Nature  pitches in to flush  the corpse out while we see the condemned prisoners rescued from death and getting back home in a bus...... . It finally ends truly as a Perfect day !