El Baño del Papa
2007 - Dir: César Charlone & Enrique Fernández
2007 - Dir: César Charlone & Enrique Fernández
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on September 17th, 2010
The Pope is coming to the UK - in fact he’s here today and will be doing a bit of canonisation and sprinkling of Holy Water in Brum on Sunday. Needless to say that the streets around the venue will be taken over by the purveyors of dubious souvenirs, fast food wagons and programme sellers. It happens everywhere for every type of event where thousands of people are expected. Been there - got the T shirt is the glib phrase but.. Beto’s story couldn’t happen here... or could it? When a country is in the grip of economic disaster people tend to take desperate measures to earn a crust. Admittedly we’re not starting from as low a point as Ecuador - we can at least afford flush toilets.... for now....
This bittersweet film comes right from the heart. The action tales place in Melo in North Eastern Uruguay. It’s about the same size as Redditch and it’s desperately poor. It’s also the home of the director César Charlone and many of the people acting in it are local amateurs. The story is imaginary. The poverty isn’t.
In 1988, when the Pope visited, Uruguay was just emerging from years of brutal dictatorship and, despite the first flutterings of fledgling democracy, the old guard found it hard to let go. The struggle to exist was still being made even harder by corrupt officials like the border guards who terrorised Beto. None of this is fictitious and all of this is still happening. It would be easy to let all this overshadow the essential message of The Pope’s Toilet - that the spirit and good humour of people is difficult to quash ... a bit of the blitz mentality surfacing in South America?
This bittersweet film comes right from the heart. The action tales place in Melo in North Eastern Uruguay. It’s about the same size as Redditch and it’s desperately poor. It’s also the home of the director César Charlone and many of the people acting in it are local amateurs. The story is imaginary. The poverty isn’t.
In 1988, when the Pope visited, Uruguay was just emerging from years of brutal dictatorship and, despite the first flutterings of fledgling democracy, the old guard found it hard to let go. The struggle to exist was still being made even harder by corrupt officials like the border guards who terrorised Beto. None of this is fictitious and all of this is still happening. It would be easy to let all this overshadow the essential message of The Pope’s Toilet - that the spirit and good humour of people is difficult to quash ... a bit of the blitz mentality surfacing in South America?
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