This lighthearted comedy pictures a late summer day in a bygone Eastern Europe. The movie’s peculiar magic turns dysfunctional socialist Warsaw into a slapstick playground that recalls Jacques Tati’s Playtime. The movie’s gags and indulgent tone might engender nostalgia for the Iron Curtain. But the film also recalls the ruckuses of dawn trash hauls, heroic workers who booze and snooze through the day, interminable construction projects, and inevitable shortages that contradicted the claims of socialist perfection. This enjoyable film balances criticism and lyricism in its portrait ofthe forgotten details of daily life in one of the people’s republics.