SURE, WAR is inevitably hell, and love triangles inevitably collapse onto their own right angles; this we know from watching countless movie variations on the theme(s). You think negotiating the killing fields or the land-mined terra firma of the heart is humanity's prime difficulty? Try penetrating the vast chasm of verbal communication, and then you'll know what true impossibility means. Thus chirpeth The Cuckoo, Alexander Rogozhkin's brilliant satire that suggests even the barriers of misunderstanding can't keep its Jules and Jim quiet on the Eastern front. Veiko (Ville Haapasalo), a Finnish lad recruited by the S.S., has pulled the short straw of duty: he's been "cuckoo'd," or chained (literally) to a rock with a sniper rifle and instructions to kill advancing enemy soldiers. After he eventually Houdinis his way out of the predicament, he runs across a local Laap lass (Anni-Kristiina Juuso) who's nursing a wounded Russian officer (Viktor Bychkov) back to health. Both the strapping lad and the elder gentleman wield a strong attraction to the earth mother – who's got more than enough libido for all three of them – and a mutual hatred for each other. None of them, however, share a common tongue. The film's desolate landscape of dirt, soot, and corpses may scream classic existential turmoil, but this songbird's tune is played as pure Gogol-esque farce. Rogozhkin's handling of the trio's skewed three-way conversations is so deadpan it would give Kaurismäki pause, but his central conceit, that even humanity at its worst can eventually fashion a forum and persevere, betrays a pulse behind the smirk. Gorgeously dirty and genuinely sly, this comedy of errors may keep a body count, but it's chiefly concerned with trilling about the survival imperative of one organ: the heart. (David Fear)