If Conclave can be reduced to a single image, it’s undoubtedly that of a cardinal taking a hit from his vape. We’re in the most hallowed spaces of the Vatican here, implanted within private practices the vast majority of the film’s audience are never meant to see (although, really, these are all sound stages in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios). Yet director Edward Berger allows us to peer in, like children planted at the doorway, to giggle at how pedestrian and mortally flawed it all is beneath the gilded finery and incense.
Cardinals scroll on their phones. Cardinals slurp up bowls of tortellini soup. Cardinals have conversations about the future of the Catholic Church next to the espresso machine. Conclave turns ritual into the hysteria of a murder mystery, the tension of a political conspiracy, the pressurised force of a criminal heist.
