Sometimes a movie’s title or tag line can tell you all you need to know about it. And in the Cannes film market, three floors of desperate hustlers and cinematic snake-oil salesmen, sometimes a title is all you get. You begin to suspect that the sole reason for the existence of films such as Gory Gory Hallelujah or Black Sheep, with its tagline of “Get ready for the violence of the lambs!”, is that somebody thought of a gag that was too good to resist.

All too frequently, the film simply can’t live up to the perfection of the pun. Better then to go the route of one of the highlights of Directors’ Fortnight so far: the Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s Garage is a title that is as enigmatic as it is prosaic. It doesn’t burden us with preconceptions, which makes the discovery of this beautifully-acted, tragicomic character study all the more exciting.

The comedian and actor Pat Short is a revelation in the central role. He brings a wonderful physicality to the character of Josie, a slow, simple but essentially good man whose frame of reference doesn’t extend far beyond the rundown garage where he works. That Josie is always wearing an Australia baseball cap is poignant given that the total of his travel is between the local pub and his place of work. The film is full of lovely details like that, which build into a rich portrait of loneliness in a dying community. And while Josie could, in other hands, be simply a figure of fun, Abrahamson and Short treat this quiet, socially inept man with utmost respect.

Two of the stand-out films of the festival sidebars have themes in common – both Chop Shop, the second feature from Ramin Bahrani, and The Pope’s Toilet, directed by Enrique Fernández, take as their subject poverty and the dream of a better life.

Chop Shop is set in Willets Point in Queens in New York, a giant junkyard of an area full of rusting vehicle hulks that are gradually cannibalised by the auto-repair shops that line the streets.

In this industrial wasteland lives and works Alejandro, a tireless 12-year-old Latino street orphan whose sunny optimism has yet to be crushed by the realities of life. Alejandro works by day in an auto-repair shop, and by night sells pirated DVDs. The handheld camera struggles to keep up with the boy and the teeming, chaotic streets where he lives.

The small moments of joy in Alejandro’s life – a glimpse of a baseball game, the arrival of his beloved sister Isamar – are seized with a heartbreaking intensity. Alejandro buys into the American dream of entrepreneurial success. He saves every penny towards a wreck of a hotdog truck that he and his sister plan to run together. But real life has a habit of crushing fragile dreams.

Alejandro Polanco’s appealing performance as the boy is the heart of a film that manages to bring a savage beauty to this most unlovely of areas.

The Pope’s Toilet is set in 1988, in Melo, a small Uruguayan town on the border with Brazil. The economy depends on the smuggling of consumer goods precariously balanced on bicycles. But when it is announced that the Pope is due to visit the town, bringing with him an estimated 50,000 devotees, the community scents the chance of a windfall. Some make mountains of sweet pastries to sell to the hungry hordes. But Beto decides to build a public toilet next door to the modest shack he shares with his long-suffering wife and daughter.

Again real life intervenes, but The Pope’s Toilet’s appeal is that it allows its desperate community a glimpse of optimism. The audience loved it.

However, the real crowd-pleaser so far is a gentle Israeli comedy called The Band’s Visit. A clash of cultures gives way to a meeting of minds – and other body parts – when an Egyptian police band boards the wrong bus and finds itself in a deadend Israeli town. It’s a real charmer of a film that stands a better chance than many Cannes titles of coming soon to a screen near you.

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