[de Aranoa is] a director at home with the small things that can make a film great -- interested in what keeps people together when everything around them is being blown apart. It's a wonderful gift.

Del Toro and Robbins adroitly capture the dark humour of the drama, and their scenes together are gems of bleak comedy.

What the film does well is to immerse us in the tragic weirdness of wartime logic, where nothing works as we would expect. It's a strong, engaging film about how hard it is to wage peace.

The director scrubs out the particulars of the Bosnian conflict, consciously aiming to reduce it to a "timeless," universal story.