I’m forced to be “negative”: the current and major movie Conclave is not good. One is tempted to use the word “awful.” Let’s just say, “disappointing.”

Some of the images are great, certain of the acting is well done, the plot turns out to be somewhat suspenseful, and the realism of clothing and inner rooms is striking.

It feels a bit like you’re “inside the Vatican.”

But there are just too few sympathetic characters in a movie that should be rife with them, and cardinals are portrayed as little more than bratty tweens in constant tussle with one another.

The main character, Ralph Fiennes (dean of the College of Cardinals), is convincing at many points, and certainly a strong voice, but in the end, wavering, loud, and unspiritual. Other prominent actors play cardinals (Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow) and the head nun (Isabella Tosselini). An unknown, Carlos Diehz, ends up the star, arriving to the conclave from Kabul and unknown by the others but, in the end, elevated by the cardinals to succeed a deceased unnamed Pontiff.

Realism is lacking as the conclave continues despite a car bomb that coats them with dust (in the Sistine Chapel) and as the conclave becomes a constant series of shouting matches.

In the end, it’s learned that the newly elected Pope is a biological hermaphrodite and that during an operation for his appendix doctors had found “he” also had a uterus. A man with an intersex trait. One can thus look at it as the first “female” Pontiff, or perhaps trans one.

Very politically “correct.”

Also rather disturbing.

We spoiled the ending.

But we’re not in the business of promoting cinema these days, particularly examples of it (again, excuse the negativity; there are some striking scenes) like this.

–MHB