As the film tells us when it begins, the events in this story are essentially true. The year is 1988, and for the first time the Pope has added Uruguay to his list of places visited on his worldwide peace-spreading tour, hoping to bring attention to some of the most impoverished places in the world. The small town of Melo has been gifted with the opportunity of hosting his visit and there is a fervor of excitement. The townspeople hustle and bustle preparing to welcome him, and hopefully plenty of Brazilian tourists, to their poor little community. The date is set for the miracle and we get to see God's blessing for these good folk.
Our story is Beto's (Cesar Troncoso), a smuggler for the small grocery stores who bicycles 60km round trip to Brazil to bring in anything from laundry detergent to whiskey. Living hand to mouth, praying for work to support his family, his daily concerns are his bum knee, his bicycle chain and most importantly the customs check at the border. He and his friends sometimes make two trips a day through marshes and hills, laden with parcels, hoping to dodge corrupt officials and macho soldiers.
Beto's family is too important for him not to risk it, though. His wife, Carmen (Virginia Mendez), is ever enduring to her husband's whims, suffering the highs and lows of their marriage and their finances with grace. The two work symbiotically for the benefit of the family, but it's not always clear that they understand they do. Their daughter is Silvia, a precocious young teen hoping one day to go to university in Montevideo to become a reporter. There is animosity between her and her father which is not completely explored.
They all have their dreams. For Silvia it's an escape; Carmen wants a happy household with a new patio; Beto wants a motorbike. Everyone in the community has their aspirations and the Pope's arrival is seen as a Godsend, there to cure their day to day misery. Well, perhaps not cure it, but at least make things a little more tolerable.
With his arrival nearing, these poorest of the poor give up great amounts, in some cases everything they have, to set up booths selling chorizo, breads, cakes and anything else they can think of. Beto has a better idea: he is going to create a public toilet in his front yard for all of those Brazilian visitors. With every visit he will be a few pesos closer to achieving all of their goals. But what he has to do in order to build that bathroom could tear his family apart.
This is a lot of setup, but it's necessary to understand the importance of what Beto decides to do. If I simply opened saying Beto wants to build an outhouse it would negate his goal and would cheapen the ideas of the people of this wasteland community. The nature of the event--these true stories--are heartbreaking. Watching them eek out less than a living doing whatever they can makes their fervor at the Pope's arrival almost admirable. There are times when we should hate Beto, reprimand him for the choices he makes and for his outbursts, but how can we when we know he is a man on the edge? It is not possible for me to empathize with him. After all, I have never had to work for dirty money to make sure my family can eat. But I can sympathize with him and I do. There is love, resentment and self-hate in his eyes; Beto is an emasculated man who has abandoned dignity to do what he feels is right. Those are feelings that rise beyond a look at poverty and focus in on the very specific consequences of underdevelopment.
This movie is powerful because there is no gloss, there is no sentimentality, there is only human beings trying to survive. Melo is a forgotten place in the world, looked over by modernization and therefore this visit is something worth filming. These people had stories to tell just like the rest of us and that toilet, cheap though it was, was as fitting a dream as any of ours.
3/4
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