Conclave review: Ralph Fiennes is Oscar-worthy astonishing

The Pope is dead. With His Holiness elegantly zipped into a pristine, white lace body bag, his room encased behind a wax seal, the cardinals must now lock themselves inside the Vatican to choose his successor.

Director Edward Berger has followed up (and bettered) All Quiet on the Western Front with this mesmerising, slow-motion papal smackdown – which should, in a righteous world, turn out to be more notable for something else: Ralph Fiennes’ long-awaited Oscar moment. It’s a hypnotically towering performance from Fiennes, more on which later.

In one corner gunning for the top job, we have swaggering, perma-vaping Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) riding on a ticket of returning the papacy to traditional Italian values. Over on the not-so-keen-on-homosexuality side of the ring is Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati, currently vowing West End audiences in Waiting for Godot), while Stanley Tucci’s mild-mannered Bellini and John Lithgow’s compromise candidate Tremblay make up the battle quadrant.

De facto referee in the midst of all this is Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes), who also has skin in the game whether he wants it or not. Quite how Lawrence holds the managerial middle ground while also raising audience suspicions that he may have his own agenda is one of the tantalising tensions here.

Lawrence and his closest confidante Bellini only seem to be in it to stop Tedesco, refuting any desire to be pontiff themselves (“I would be the Richard Nixon of popes,” says one in a cloistered aside). Yes, besides Tedesco wafting his vape smoke into the sanctimonious face of proceedings, there’s plenty of deliciously gentle humour here.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a juicy ascendancy story without a steady flow of Machiavellian machinations and revelations, although they are delivered effectively here without having to resort to puerile F-bombing à la Succession’s Roman Roy and gang.

A bunch of superannuated men banged up indoors, endlessly debating and voting on who’s going to be the boss might sound a little, well, dull (a friend of mine simultaneously eyerolled and yawned when I told her I was seeing this).

However, it’s based on a Robert Harris novel, so the twists and turns are guaranteed. Into the mix, and almost stealing the show, are also thrown wildcards Isabella Rossellini (flawless and impeccable) as a nun who dares to speak her mind; and Carlos Diehz playing the unlikely Mexican cardinal of Kabul who the Vatican wasn’t even aware existed.

On top of all this is the visual feast served up by Stéphane Fontaine’s camera work; one moment hyper-vividly zooming in to every perspiring pore of these embattled cardinals, the next pulling out reveal the grandest of tableaus. Cloaked in deep, velvety crimson, these holy men look like glacé cherries floating on a particularly beautiful cake.

It's not all perfect. Some “incidents” are dealt with a little too easily, and audiences might guess the eventual inheritor of the papal crown. There are also some barely explicable shenanigans going on out in the real world — the only purpose of which seems to be to facilitate an albeit gorgeously Damascene vision of Fiennes in clouds of dust against the painted backdrop of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It does look bloody lovely though.

All the performances are top drawer (Lithgow’s is perhaps a little too 3rd Rock). And Fiennes? If he does win the Oscar (which looks less likely with the current buzz around one Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in next month’s A Complete Unknown), it will rightly be for probably his best role yet. When the camera closes in on his reddened eyes to reveal a thousand-mile-deep sea of anguish and dilemma, it feels like the finest acting on the planet right now.

Conclave is in cinemas from November 29