A Perfect Day

SNAPSHOT OF DISILLUSIONMENT IN BALKANS

The madness and futility of war is plumbed — quite literally — by an excellent multinational cast in this drama from Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa.

Set “somewhere in the Balkans, 1995,” the picture opens with Mambrú ( Benicio Del Toro), a Puerto Rican aid worker, trying to hoist a bloated corpse out of a rural well. When the rope breaks, it sets him and his colleagues on a two- day odyssey to find another.

The team includes B ( Tim Robbins), whom we first see trying to think his way around a dead cow that may have been left in the road to disguise al and mine; Sophie ( Mélanie Thierry), an idealist who has never seen a corpse before — or a dead cow, for that matter; and their translator ( Fedja Stukan), who fancies him- self the Henry Higgins of humour, able to tell where a man is from based on his jokes ( though he’s stumped when one guy says he needs his rope for hangings). Is that gallows humour or gallows seriousness?

They soon pick up a fifth wheel in the form of Katya ( Olga Kurylenko), a UN war analyst who has a past with Mambrú. (Undercutting any critical carping about putting a Bond Girl in a war picture, Robbins’ character asks if she’s from Models Without Borders.) Rounding out the party is Nikola, a boy of about 12 who claims to know where some rope may be found.

If you can s wallow a premise of twine being such a rare commodity that two teams must drive halfway across the Balkans to find it, then there is much to appreciate in the film’s smaller moments. The aid workers’ vehicles are festooned with no- guns symbols, although whether that’s to indicate we- don’t- have- any or please- don’t- shoot- us is never clear.

And Del Toro’s character is a fascinating bundle of contradictions. Anxious to return home, he’s also desirous that aid work continue in spite of the cessation ( on paper, at least) of hostilities. “Me leaving is one thing,” he says. “All of us leaving is another.” But he’s also clearly been worn down by local brutality and UN bureaucracy.

A Perfect Day is an odd beast; León de Aranoa keeps the tension taut but consistently cuts away from the horrors of the conflict — dead cows is about as bad as it gets. And the soundtrack is an eclectic mix that i ncludes Lou Reed, Marlene Dietrich, Velvet Underground and a Marilyn Manson cover of Sweet Dreams ( Are Made of This). War may be hell, but that doesn’t mean it can’t sound good.

A Perfect Day opens across Canada on Feb. 26.