Conclave is top-class, grown-up entertainment

Conclave, adapted from Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, is possibly not the sort of film I would usually think of watching – though I enjoyed The Two Popes when I streamed it in February. I might not have any faith left myself, but given my heavily religious background (very evangelical Methodist) I can still understand and appreciate Biblical debate, and almost inevitably find myself retaining an interest in religion in general.

I only really became aware of this film when seeing the trailer last week and, finding some of the rave reviews it’s been getting (including from the likes of Mark Kermode), decided to give it a go.

It opens with Cardinal-Dean Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) hurrying toward the Vatican to oversee arrangements after the pope has died. Aside from mourning his religiously progressive leader, it means that Lawrence will now have to organise and oversee the conclave of the world’s Catholic cardinals that elects the next pope.

The cardinals have been readying themselves for this – positioning themselves for possible election and campaigning among the rest of their number. The primary contenders are Aldo Cardinal Bellini, an American liberal (Stanley Tucci); Joseph Cardinal Tremblay, a Canadian moderate (John Lithgow); Goffredo Cardinal Tedesco, a right-wing Italian who wants the Mass to be said in Latin again (Sergio Castellitto); and Joshua Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a popular Nigerian candidate with conservative social views.

But on the eve of the conclave, one Vincent Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) arrives in the Vatican – a Mexican archbishop apparently appointed by the late pope without anyone else knowing – and working as the cardinal of Kabul in Afghanistan. Suspicions are raised.

There were already whispers about the pope’s last hours and final meeting, and Benitez’s presence only adds to the suggestions of conspiracy and dodgy doings.

The scheming between the candidates and their supporters is barely hidden – though it involves noir whispered talks in quiet corners and comments that only a cardinal that didn't want to be pope would be a suitable one. But who doesn't, at some level, harbour the ambition?

In terms of the performances, it is a wonderful ensemble cast – and that absolutely includes not only all the actors named above, but also Isabella Rossellini as senior nun Sister Agnes, who gets to deliver a truth bomb that is magnificent – and conclude it with a gesture that has seen audiences laughing at screenings (not just the one I attended).

Edward Berger’s film is pretty much perfect as a piece of grown-up entertainment. It’s intelligent. It’s quite easy to see that the world of the Catholic church presented here could also be the corporate or political worlds, so this is not ‘about’ religion. It’s about ambition, power and the gaining and use of that by human beings who, even at their best, are not perfect.

I’ve tended to avoid films of much over 90 minutes in the last year: this comes in at two hours, but Berger’s direction means this doesn’t feel close to that. The pacing is spot on for the tension. Peter Straughan’s screenplay from Harris’s novel is superb: dryly witty, never condescending. It feels so timely, given what the world is seeing today in terms of regressive politics.

Similarly, Volker Bertelmann’s soundtrack is spot on. Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography is a joy. The mostly muted colours – creamy marble, greys and whites – set against cardinal red – are stark. Some scenes have a feeling of having been choregraphed to almost Busby Berkley levels – cardinals in the rain with their uniform white umbrellas, shot from above, is just one, while the ceremonial aspects and rituals are superb, treated with complete seriousness and respect, yet also revealing the performance and theatre at the centre of church life.

A little personal note here for context (well, I did start this post with one!).

Until I stopped attending church altogether in my mid-twenties, I had drifted away from evangelical Methodism and toward high Anglicanism. I appreciated the theatricality, performance and ritual of services. And I continue to very much appreciate religious music – not the Gospel songs of Billy Graham-style crusade rallies, which haunt me unpleasantly, but works such as the requiems of Mozart, Fauré and Britten.

But let's get back to the review.

If I have any slight complaint, it's that the character of Tedesco is perhaps made to be overly obviously awful. He stands in the refectory vaping, yet refuses to stand for prayers in the Sistine Chapel – just two shows of contempt for most of his brother cardinals, despite he himself being the one that wants 'tradition' brought back. But perhaps that's being over sensitive when we live in a world full of real pantomime villains who are actually very dangerous.

As Lawrence, Fiennes is outstanding. For all the very carefully played camp of the film in general (it's a balancing act Berger gets spot on), his is a stunningly subtle performance. Acting with the eyes, as it were, is an absolute art and he is as good at it as Anthony Hopkins. His own inner struggle so often needs no words to be crystal clear. If he isn’t in the Oscar noms next spring, there’ll be something wrong with the film world.

And the ending – true to the book – is done with real class, even though it may not be quite what some would expect, given its extraordinary topicality.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. Seriously superior entertainment, with an actual ethical heart and message.

Blue Velvet: The dark underbelly of the American Dream

For the second day running, a birthday present from my niece gave me the opportunity to catch up on an iconic film that I’ve never quite got around to watching. In this case, David Lynch’s 1986 Blue Velvet – an “adult fairytale”, according to the BFI.

Why have I not seen it before? Largely, I think, because I’d wondered if I’d find it ‘too much’, such is its reputation and also, because inevitably, I’d seen fleeting clips of Dennis Hopper inhaling something that turns his character more psychotic and dangerous than ever.

Writer and director Lynch opens the film with surreal scenes of a sugar-sweet, small-town America; an immaculate white picket fence, red roses and a blue sky – redolent of the Stars and Stripes – and a fire truck moving down a street in slo-mo, with a fireman on the back waving directly toward the camera, a dalmatian sitting alongside him. Then a middle-aged man watering his lawn, while his wife inside the house watches a crime mystery on the TV.

So far, so good. But then the gardener has an accident with his hose (the implement seems almost to turn on him) and everything is spun on its head, as the film dives beneath the carefully manicured grass to find a churning mass of insects in the dark below.

The gardener is Tom Beaumont. Hospitalised, he’s visited by his son, Jeffrey, who has returned from college because of the accident. But on the way home after his visit, Jeffrey discovers a human ear in a field, which he takes to the police station, to a Detective John Williams, who’s also a family neighbour.

Later, after he’s called on Williams at home to see if there is any news, Sandy, the policeman’s daughter, stops him in the street to say she’s overheard that the ear somehow relates to a nightclub singer named Dorothy Vallens. Fascinated by the idea of a mystery, Jeffrey decides to investigate – and is drawn into the word of psychopathic gangster and drug dealer Frank Booth.

So the film moves from surrealism into noir. But this is no conventional noir. The hero, for instance, in no hard-boiled, cynical character – à la Bogart in The Big Sleep – but a boyish ingenu.

Likewise, neither the ‘good girl’ (Sandy; blonde) nor the ‘femme fatale’ (Dorothy; dark haired) fit simply into those cinematic cliches. Both are more complex.

And that’s before we get to Frank (left, with Dorothy), with all the suggestions that at least an element of his ultra-violence is down to self-loathing: is he straight, gay or bi?

It’s never a bigger question than in an extraordinary scene when Frank and his thugs have dragged Jeffrey and Dorothy to the den of fellow drug dealer Ben. There, the camp, made-up ‘Suave’ Ben lip-synchs to Roy Orbison’s In Dreams, right at Frank, as though in an act of seduction, moving him to tears of rage or something else.

Right after, before beating Jeffrey, Frank smears the young man’s lips with lipstick and savagely kisses him.

Is this about toxic masculinity and the pressures to conform to heteronormative stereotypes? It’s certainly about power relationships; Frank’s exercise of power over everyone in his orbit – except Ben, who seems to have the upper hand there – and Dorothy’s over Jeffery are both crucial, but there is also the question of who exercises the power in the relationship between Sandy and Jeffrey.

There are so many things to take in here. Sandy, in her blonde innocence, nods back to 1978’s Grease and the leading character of the same name. The naming of the ‘femme fatale’ begs the question: is Frank (who is obsessed with her) really a ‘friend of Dorothy’?

Then there’s the contrast between the darkness and violence of the film and the two big musical themes – Bobby Vinton’s cover of 1950 song Blue Velvet by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris, and Orbison’s 1963 In Dreams – as if they hark back nostalgically to a gentler time and their use by Lynch is a subversion of that ‘gentler time’ – a time that was suggested by the opening shots.

It was far from universally acclaimed when it came out, but Lynch’s film has more than stood the test of time and well deserves its status as a classic.

The central cast is excellent. Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy is strong and vulnerable at the same time. Kyle MacLachlan is suitably innocent as Jeffrey, finding himself out of his depth when drawn toward a stranger world than he had previously imagined possible. Laura Dern makes Sandy both plausibly girlish, yet also with a tough core.

But it’s Hopper who dominates the film as Frank, in a performance that is absolutely riveting; even when you want to flinch and look away, you cannot.

The supporting cast are largely sketches – with one exception. Dean Stockwell’s Ben (left) – albeit a one-scene turn – is simply exceptional.

Lynch wraps it up with a ‘happily ever after’ finale, which returns us to the surreal openings, but with the addition of an animatronic robin, which reiterates the message that all this is really just artifice and wishful thinking. Indeed, the film it culminates with a repeat of those very first sequences.

But by now, we are well aware of the dark underbelly of such an American Dream. Brilliant.

• Femme is a 2023 film takes a deeper dive into the theme of sexuality-driven self loathing.