The Latin American Film Festival opened this year with an eye opening film, a collaboration between France and Uruguay, entitled “The Pope's Toilet.” I went to see it because I have a friend who has a permanent (though heavily concealed, to the point of near-invisibility) tatoo. Placed in a circular pattern of avant-garde bold text, concentric to her belly-button, are inscribed the words (in English, of course) Made in Uruguay. She had to see this film, and I had to see it with her.

It is a beautiful piece of work, thoughtful, insightful, and provocative. Visually, the film unfolds with extreme close-ups of bike riding, referential part-images that imply meaning, reflections (analagous to TV as a mirror), shadows and real-time, real-light, cinema-verite styles of cinematic treatment. There are a number of interesting camera angles that provide references to where the director wants your eye and brain to steer to.

The opening images are of a group of cyclists riding through the pampas countryside. They resemble their gringo counter-parts who zoom through landscapes on titanium bicycles in elaborate microfibre attire that makes them look and sound like mosquitoes, burdened with waterproof saddlebags in neon colors that scream “look at me, I'm expensive!”

These cyclists are also in a group. They are also burdened with sacs. They also laugh and talk and plod doggedly on, through muck, past their placid counterparts reflected on the lakefront vistas, into the sunset colors of the big, spectacular South American skies. But their trajectory is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle rider who rides past them, yelling "la movil, la movil!”

At this juncture, we see (and hear, as the sountrack is orchestrated and effective) a large, tattered, red truck that disbands the group, chasing the cyclists down like a hunter on an African Safari. In white lettering is the sign: Duanas (Customs). After shooting off a pistol (for effect) the milico (slang for military person) helps himself to a large bottle of whiskey, smashes a few bags and scatters goods over the countryside, in irreverent dismissal of any enviro-conscious intents. This is when we realize that this is not your usual bicycle excursion. What we are witness to is a contraband troupe, weaving its way through the Brazilian/Uruguayan borders in a choreography laced with danger, fueled by necessity, where extreme is a reality, not an adjective, and to have no fear is an illusion.

Our hero manages to escape by concealment. He hides himself and his stuff behind a rock, refusing to reveal his identity when the milico asks everyone to come forward and identify themselves. With time, we come to realize that this is not a heroic, but rather, a cowardly act. Both the milico and the main character are unmasked. The veil of duality drops to reveal a customs officer who is in financial cahoots with the smugglers and the customs guards on the main road, and a smuggler who sells out to the milico's bribes in order to feed his family's fiscal fantasy in the form of the Pope's toilet.

The storyline is not complicated. The Pope is going to visit Melo as part of his world tour. The media (TV and radio) hype-up the visit. The villagers (who live in poverty and are forced to smuggle goods on the blackmarket) fall prey to this and invest all the money they have and all the money they do not have but can borrow into preparing food, gifts and other goods to sell to the huge crowds that the media predicts are coming.

Fritters, chorizos, BBQ meat, cotton candy and sundry tourist items are being offered. Our hero, who uses his mate (gourd) to drink yerba and his mate (brain) to think with, has a brilliant idea. He decides to build a toilet. A real nice one. A pay-as-you-go toilet (remember, this is not the land of the porta-potty, at least not yet). He convinces, cajoles, and then steals money from his devoted, hardworking, thrifty wife to carry out his plan. She suggests selling holy medallions, which he scoffs at. Their daughter (La Sylvia), dreams of becoming a radio or TV announcer. The savings have been targeted for her education, in Montevideo (Uruguay's cosmopolitan, sophisticated capital city). The toilet is built (it is really nice, even the door). The hero compromises his ideals, sells out his friends, lies to his wife and daughter, and relentlessly pursues his dream of becoming a really big shit, by capitalizing on everyone else's.

A poignant moment is when he gets drunk in the bar, and, drunk, tries to sing the Uruguayan National Anthem, which incites people to fight tyranny in favour of liberty (and which, for the uninitiated, was banned from public broadcast by the military during their dictatorship). After this, he is out of luck. His life-line is severed, as no one in the people's blackmarket circuit wants to deal with him. This is when he enters the blackmarket from the official side. He runs errands on his bike, through the official customs gate, past the heavily bribed “Luna” guard, for the customs Safari guy, Meleyo. The masks have fallen.

Adorning this story, like silver filagree around the borders, are the delightful antics of Sylvia, who, flashlight in hand like a microphone on the flickering black and white TV monitor in the bar (one of only two in the entire neighborhood), pretends she is an announcer. When the batteries for the radio run out, Sylvia finishes fragments of newscasting in her own voice, mimicking the tempo, the accent and the choice of vocabulary to a T. We see in her shadow on the sheets that she is hanging on the line for her mother's laundering business as she speaks to the as yet invisible crowds of Melo's papal visit. We see her reflection in a window, in a fragment of glass. It is her desire to become something against Fate, something that she perceives as better, as ideal: a TV announcer, a radio announcer. Anything but to follow the well-worn tire tracks of the smugglers across the border to Brazil and (if they are very fast and very lucky) back home.

TV footage of the Pope's visits is seen, re-cycled and grainy. Real footage. Real Pope. Real bullet-proof, gold adorned carriage. Times have changed for the Christians, my friends. Jesus never rode like this. Out-of-focus and fisheye lens shots of TV screens feature also, visual references that sometimes take over the entire movie screen and, at other times, are just used as fragments. We see what the media wants us to see, and what the director wants us to see but that the media masks, sequentially and simultaneously. We see the mask, we see behind the mask, we see alongside the mask at the face of rural Uruguay.

With time, the film exposes the myths that are fed to these people, desperately in need of some fragment of hope to pin their efforts to, and even Sylvia realizes that they have all been had. The masks have fallen. Faced with a reality that has been unmasked, despite the trailing protests of the television announcers who doggedly continue to re-frame what is occurring, we see the trails of uncooked chorizos left for the dogs, the piles of fritters on the ground, the tattered remains of the carnival banners, all in slow-mo and set to a surreal soundtrack.

While Fellini's imagery places excess solidly in the realm of fantasy, this is all too close to reality. In the end, Sylvia cannot escape her poverty with her ethics intact. Leaving behind her childhood dreams, she follows her father down the dusty road to Brazil, on foot, as the bike has been used to pay off Luna, who has threatened to help himself to the family females in payment of favours rendered. And the wife? She just keeps on praying, lighting candles, cooking, laundering, and standing by her man.

Wait just a minute, I heard you say. What about her idea? Well, we find out that the only best-selling item in the whole tawdry festival was the religious medallions from Brazil. Oy, vey! That was some movie.