A cinema near me is showing an off-shoot of the Viva festival I attended in Manchester in March, so I went to see a film I was unable to see back then, which is also (I think) the first Uruguayan film I've ever seen : The Pope's Toilet.
Directed (along with Enrique Fernández) by Fernando Meirelles's cinematographer extraordinaire César Charlone, this is a film about the Pope's visit to a town by the Brazilian border in the late 1980s and the expectation and preparation of the locals prior to his coming. Throughout the film we see the media increasing speculation about the number of people who will be coming from Brazil to see the Pope (it goes from 20,000 to 40,000 startlingly quickly) and seemingly all the locals are intent on making as much money as possible through selling chorizo.
The family we follow though is headed by smuggler Beto and he gets the idea of rather than selling food like everyone else (who are taking bank loans to fund the endeavour) he will erect as fancy a toilet as there is in town (they only have outhouses) and charge the coming throngs for the privilege.
This is a very nice little film, Charlone doubles as cinematographer and his work is predictably excellent. The overall reaction I had to the film reminded me a little of what I thought of Leatherheads, in that it's not great and doesn't reach its potential, but equally it's a very nice watch with very little to complain about.
I liked the performances, I didn't think it was consistently laugh out loud funny, but it is very amusing. It's a gentle film, it doesn't rush itself and it is extremely watchable. By no means fantastic, but a nice diversion I cannot see too many people disliking.