Conclave review – Ralph Fiennes takes charge of tense papal election thriller

Toronto film festival: the actor leads a top-tier ensemble, including Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini, in an entertainingly juicy adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel

Like the easily devoured paperback it’s based on, pulpy papal thriller Conclave has a brisk, page-turning allure, filled with juicy intrigue and mystery, a beach read that would follow you back home after. We’ve become grimly accustomed to plot-heavy bestsellers such as this stretched out into indulgent 10-episode seasons of television (such as the recently misjudged re-adaptation of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+), a baggy over-extension of stories that demand a tighter grip.

So it’s a mercy of sorts to see All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger transform Robert Harris’s “unputdownable” pot-boiler into a brisk, contained feature instead, a two-hour escape to the Vatican that knows exactly when to drop us in and take us out. It’s a fairly dry set-up in theory but Harris and playwright Peter Straughan (who co-wrote 2011’s equally involving adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) have found humour and suspense in the fictionalised hunt for a new Pope, an election that propels a timely and tense political thriller, scheduled to be released in the US just days before a real one takes place.

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