From the title, I thought this film would be a comedy in the vein of Big Night, where the community anticipate the Pope's visit and doesn't happen. It is an Uruguayan drama about one family with big dreams.
It is the 1980s, and in a poor town, Pope John Paul II is to stop by on a tour. The townsfolk anticipate his visit and make huge plans to welcome him. The numbers of people expected to make the pilgrimage from Brazil and the surrounding area gets more and more inflated. As a result, many local inhabitants get ready to take commercial advantage by selling homemade food, banners, buttons, etc. They also hope that this visit will mean an influx of economic prosperity to their life of hardship.
One such man is Beto. He, like many other men, operate a sort of black market business by bicycling to larger towns further away to buy goods, which he brings back to the smaller mom-and-pop shops in his town. But Beto has to deal with competitors on motorcycles, local officers who ask for bribes, and the grueling bike rides which are taking their toll on his aging body. His wife tries to make ends meet and save what little they can. Their teenage daughter has aspirations to become a tv newscaster, but seems destined to be a seamstress or bike like her dad.
Beto has the bright idea to build a pay toilet in anticipation of the big crowds they expect from nearby and more civilized Brazil for the Pope's visit (his town only has outhouses). He and some neighbors and friends help to build the toilet but he comes across many obstacles.
Although I could see the toilet was going to be an outrageous and unprofitable scheme, the outcome of the story did offer a tiny bit of hope for Beto and his family. Overall though, Beto's story reflects the rest of the town, who seemed to have pinned their hopes on this visit which amounted to little economic boost for them.
The story offered each of the three members of the family their own hope to better their situation, whether it was unsuccessful like Beto, or still with hope on the horizon like his daughter.
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