The Pope's Toilet

Melo is like this. The film shows the reality of this area of the country where very poor people have to do their best in order to survive. It is the reality of most of our peoples in Latin America. Their dreams and their daily struggle against poverty and frustration. The Pope's visit is a very good way to show what these people do every day to live a "decent" life. The direction, the actors, the natural scenery. everything is in its right place and all of us left the theater with the feeling that life is so and nobody can do anything to change the way thing are for them. Just one word to define it: Excellent.

Excellent actors achieve a perfect description of how people live, work and feel in the Uruguayan towns bordering Brazil. They need very few quick words to tell you everything about the characters they represent.

In spite of all their problems it still sends a very positive message about the efforts of this family to stay together. They are really concerned about the future of their daughter. Both parents go to extremes for the well being of their small family.

The expressions of the silent face of the daughter tell you everything in her mind.

It is a very sad subject but very well treated with delicate touches of humor.

A bit too slow for today's viewer accustomed to fast action but, still an excellent movie.

Maybe not as good as "Whisky" but in the same league of the several Uruguayan movies we have seen lately. Quite different but as good as "El viaje hacia el Mar".

It is a film that leaves the viewer looking for hidden and not so hidden messages from its creators.

It shows very clearly and graphically the contrast between the opulence of the trip of the Pope and his multiple assistants and the local poverty.

The close-ups of the pope mobile stress the two different worlds; the Pope's and the people's.

Is that a message to the church asking for a modernization of their public relations strategy?

The TV reporter has no problem broadcasting news he has not confirmed. He talks about a long line of buses waiting to cross the borderline from Brazil, filled with visitors raising the expectations of the viewers.

The many interviews with people who are planning to profit from the Pope's visit feed the hopes of many others without any real basis.

Is that a message to the media, asking for more ethical reporting?

El Baño del Papa (2007) written and directed by César Charlone and Enrique Fernández, was shown in the U.S. with the title, "The Pope's Toilet."

The film stars César Troncoso as the small-time smuggler Beto, and Virginia Méndez as Carmen, his loving but cautious wife. The Pope is going to pay a visit to Melo, a small Uruguayan city near the Brazilian border. The residents of Melo are in a fever of anticipation about the visit, especially about the thousands of Brazilian tourists who will come across the border to be present at this historical moment.

Beto, like all his friends and neighbors, is caught up in the almost ritualistic excitement. He has the creative thought of constructing a pay toilet for the tourists as his means of finally making some real profits.

The rest of the plot hinges on Beto's schemes to acquire enough capital to construct the toilet, and to get the project finished before the Pope arrives. In order to do this, he has to come to terms with people other than the "honest" small-scale tradesmen who purchase his smuggled household goods. He strikes a deal with the devil, although there were varied opinions within our group of just who the bad guy was. (He was obviously a bad guy, and he had power over Beto, but we weren't sure of his exact role. I think he was the local customs officer.)

The acting in the film was uniformly good, and the two leads were outstanding. The locations seemed authentic to me, although I have no way to judge this. The subtitles were fine.

We saw this film at Rochester's Dryden Theatre, as part of the excellent Rochester Labor Film Festival. It will probably work very well on a small screen. It's an interesting, if flawed film, and worth seeing as long as you don't expect a masterpiece. Let's face it--Uruguayan films don't come along every day, at least they don't come along in Rochester. "The Pope's Toilet" is a way to enter a culture that is like our own in very basic ways, but far different from our culture in practical, day-to-day matters.

*Note* Avoid the trailer for this film. It gives away the plot and the best lines.

Reading the seven reviews about this movie broke my heart. How is it possible that we have only seven reviews of such a good movie when we see some dribbling silly Hollywood comedies with hundreds of reviews??

Well, that tells us about the sad state of the world. "El baño del Papa", ("The Pope's toilet"), has received, from seven reviewers, very well appointed comments, so I won't go much further into that; just from my point of view, I can add that I don't remember having seen a film as dark as this one with that sort of a downhearted feeling at the very end.

It reminds one of the 1940's Italian neorealist cinema. Or the Brazilian films about poor people. The contrast between the Pope, wrapped within yards and yards of excellent quality clothes, clean, perfectly shaved, probably exquisitely perfumed and made up, enclosed in his armor-plated Papa mobile, unreachable, aloof, always surrounded by dozens of bodyguards, delivering his totally unrealistic talk and obviously ready to leave that miserable place as soon as polite etiquette will allow him to, and the stark poverty of these suffering and hungry strata of humanity, full of aborted expectations and barely covered in rags in that very cold morning, reminded me of another excellent film, the Italian: "Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi" ("Ugly, Filthy and Bad"), filmed with the same kind of marginal people and showing their fight for survival at any cost.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

But the glory of this film comes with the final scene, the one around which the whole movie was constructed. We are given the same expectations of sudden riches that these villagers have had throughout the whole movie, from the very beginning, when they learn by watching the news on TV that the Pope will make a stop at Merlo, their forgotten little place in Uruguay, borderline with Brazil, to be cruelly taken away with a sudden crush from cold reality in no more than 10 minutes at the end, after a whole month of expensive preparations for the event, all villagers hoping to make some money from the tourists coming from Brazil to see the Pope in person. Tourists that will be hungry and thirsty and will buy all the food prepared during that month of high expectations. Only 400 hundred tourist came for the event, and the locals have had almost 400 hundred tents collapsing with food!! (they were told by irresponsible TV people that 50.000 visitors where expected!!)

Practically none of the tourists bought anything, in total indifference to the many offerings, and they left as they came, on their buses.

Totally heartbreaking. These villagers invested every little cent they had (some of them taking a mortgage on their sordid homes!!). It leaves you breathless. What a lay down!! Probably, as I said before, one of the most overpowering endings of any movie I had ever seen.

This devastating event really took place in Uruguay in 1988.

*END OF SPOILERS*

"The Pope's toilet", another foreign film (for the USA) that Hollywood will never dream of touching, not even with a ten foot pole, to make an American remake of it. But this one YOU MUST SEE!!

If you are looking for effects, heroes and such, don't watch it. If you watch movies as a thread of facts, or scenes, you'll never understand a movie like this. But if you open your mind enough to understand what poverty does to the characters; their broken dreams, their lack of material goods, their lack of education, food, etc., and read carefully each one of the subtle (and not so subtle sometimes) messages about honesty, friendship and family values, and how strong those values can be, you'll find you are watching a little jewel; surprisingly, non-pro actors almost outperform pro actors, thus making a very fresh and simple film, very natural. A message goes to church: it seems church doesn't care about poor people but only when is good marketing; feeding kids in poor countries (just an example, not related with the film) may be of great impact, but getting involved with problems and faith of people seems not to be important at all. That doesn't means stop feeding kids; that means not making a display of richness each time a country is visited, cause seems that the church laughs at people's poverty and suffering. I guess that's why so many of us in Uruguay believe in god, but doesn't trust the church as an institution anymore. Press credibility is at stake too. My personal opinion from now on: the message is clear.. the flame of values is still alive. Don't let it die, cause only values will keep us alive as big family.