Back in Montevideo, and of course going to the cinema you run into someone you know. Not to mention the folks in the cafe. The difference with impersonal London is stark. Anyhow, this person, a critic of sorts, called out to me after the film, asking me what I thought. He told me he thought it was ‘todo muy correcto’ but he was clearly underwhelmed. Which perhaps surprised me, as Conclave is the kind of high-end ‘quality’ film-making which crosses international boundaries and presumably has a universal appeal. The very content of the film, a bringing together of Cardinals from all over the world, plays to this. I’d enjoyed it more than I expected, and Fiennes does a good job as the protagonist of a resolutely unglamorous film, or rather, the glamour comes from locations and artwork, rather than the actors. It’s not an easy premise and Berger employs a great deal of oficio to make a constantly watchable movie out of a collection of old men sitting around and repeatedly having to write a name on a piece of paper. So on the one hand this is a great example of classical filmmaking, the kind of film that perhaps they don’t make anymore, and on the other, there’s something so polished about it that it’s in danger of feeling like an expensive car in a Belgravia shopwindow.
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