'The Pope's Toilet' on screen for Sun Cinema Thursday

  The title may conjure images that don't quite match the subject of this film. But it does match the general tone of irreverence.

  “The Pope's Toilet” is based on actual events - and even contains TV footage - of 20 years ago, when Pope John Paul II was leading his entourage throughout the world, blessing the masses from his bulletproof “Popemobile.”

  “The Pope's Toilet” will be shown Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Historic Yuma Theatre, 254 S. Main St., admission $3. Part of the Sun Cinema Series, the screening includes an independent short film and a hosted discussion. Language is Spanish with English subtitles. Run time of the feature is 97 minutes.

  “The traveling pope” is scheduled to make a stop in tiny Melo, an Uruguayan town just across the border from Brazil. The media are hyping the event, predicting that about 50,000 Brazilians will flock to this remote village to pay their respects.

  For the locals, the pope's visit is a miracle. Each family comes up with a scheme to sell something at the event. For most of them it is food - chorizo, sweet bread, sausages, juice - whatever they know how to make. Many of them sell their valuables or take out a loan on their houses to finance their venture. It's the chance of a lifetime.

  Beto is a local guy who, like many of his friends, makes ends meet by making a frequent run into nearby Brazil on his rickety bike and sneaking back across the cow pastures with a few luxuries to be sold in the general store - batteries, booze, name-brand edibles.

  The escapades of these international smugglers is usually comical but sometimes serious, as when their cargoes are appropriated by customs agents at the ramshackle crossing post or by the local heavy, Melayo, who patrols the border.

 Part buffoon and part desperate dreamer, Beto decides that his contribution to the upcoming spectacle will be a fancy new outhouse. It won't have plumbing, but it will have a painted door and a pricing structure - “half service or full service?” The venture is a sure thing; after all, what are the crowds going to do after eating all that chorizo?

  As with all his neighbors, Beto has to sacrifice everything to make this dream come true. He has to make extra trips into Brazil on his bike, in spite of a trick knee. He might even have to make a devil's deal with Melayo to pay for the bricks and mortar.

  The toilet itself will have to come over the border. And to pay for it ... he has his eye on the meager savings that his long-suffering wife keeps in a glass jar - intended for sending their daughter to broadcasting school in the capital.

  “The Pope's Toilet” is a simple story set in a rural area, where life is simple if only because no one has any money for complexities. The bright green pampas where Beto pedals his bike to and fro is unique and breathtaking. Co-director César Charlone, who was nominated for an Oscar for his cinematography on the 2002 “City of God,” even manages to get in some fancy camerawork.

  Although the historical event is real, the setting impoverished, and the artistic style realistic, the film is rich in its human themes and its literary symbolism.

  We get a glimpse of a way of life that we feel won't last much longer; these salt-of-the-earth folk are pawns in the play of world events. Still, the film is less about the presence of the pope than about the communication between a father and a daughter.

  And the brand-new toilet? We're left with an image of Beto carrying it down the lonely road like a cross. Food for thought, fodder for the soul.