Oscar’s hopes are rising Conclavea film that asks “If an episode of gossip girl was established at Vatican?” A strong box office this past weekend only added to the film’s awards season spotlight, a delightful combination real housewives and The Da Vinci Code. Ralph Fiennes might now be our favorite for Best Actor for his role as Olivia Pope in a beautiful red cassock.

To be clear, however it may read, all of the above is an endorsement. Conclave it’s a prestige film that will resonate with a mainstream audience, but it’s appealingly juicy, almost soap opera-ish, in a silly way that it may or may not achieve.

As such, anyone who has seen the film is buzzing, as fervently as those priests spilling the tea in the film, especially about the ending.

Based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, the film focuses on Fiennes’ Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, who is in charge of the papal conclave to elect a new pope after the death of the incumbent.

The commotion in the stairwells and shadowy corners of the hall is more like an episode of Series than some of us would like to know, as the cardinals present campaign, plan and try to wrangle enough votes for their so-called candidate to be the next Holy Ruler. Everything is turned upside down, however, by the arrival of a cardinal who, under the previous pope, had secretly worked for their own safety in dangerous regions of the world. Suddenly, everyone’s calculations about how the conclave could or should go are thrown out.

(Warning: Major spoilers ahead.)

It’s best to come in Conclave not knowing what will happen, because he has one of the most Wait…WHAT?!?! upheavals in recent memory. We’re about to talk about that reveal, so don’t read any further if you want to stay unspoiled.

Throughout the film, the high-ranking members of the conclave try to figure out what the whole deal is with surprise guest Cardinal Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz). They go so far as to obtain background checks on him, revealing the mysterious doctor’s appointments that were made through the Vatican that he never attended.

When the toxic political agendas of the other cardinals reach a boiling point, however, Benitez steps in with a speech so pure and focused that the conclave inevitably votes him to be the new pope.

It is after it just so happens that Cardinal Lawrence gets one last vital piece of information from all those background checks on Benitez: the surgery Benitez was booked for was for a hysterectomy. Benitez is intersex and was assigned male at birth. He has a penis, a uterus and ovaries. “I’m like God myself,” Benitez tells Lawrence when confronted.

It’s an explosive showdown for movie audiences. Forget what you feel about Catholic Church and his stance on women of the cloth. How do you see gender identity? The conclave has just elected, depending on your position on the matter, a pope that some would call biologically feminine.

There are film critics who take issue with the whiplash of this twist. And naturally, there are Catholics who aren’t happy…especially with the film’s resolution, which is that Lawrence decides to keep this information private. Benitez is the new pope.

There’s the intense reaction you’d expect. “Don’t watch this movie! The controversy surrounding the ‘Conclave’ for Catholic viewers’ is a top hit on YouTube for the film, the back account having 47,300 subscribers. of Ben Shapiro Dig YouTube to his 7 million subscribers is clearer about it: “Catholics should be P—ed about this movie.”

There is even one whole reddit thread titled, “Conclaveis it okay to watch?” The request: “I don’t want to watch anti-Catholic movies. But interested in the movie Conclave. Is it okay to look like a practicing Catholic?”

Back on Earth, far from the online extreme, however, the reaction from Catholic critics was more nuanced than I, a lapsed practitioner, expected.

“A serious, even somber tone and a top-notch cast add weight to the church melodrama. Conclave“, he says review that ran in The Catholic Magazine. “However, the film is essentially a cauldron of power struggles, continually churning with tantalizing plot developments – the last and most significant of Catholic viewers will likely find it uncomfortable at best.”

About that ending, the review had more poignant thoughts: “Not only teachers of dogmatic theology, but all cinephiles devoted to church creeds will consequently want to tackle this serious, visually arresting, yet manipulative—and sometimes sensationalist—production – with caution. The ideological smoke it sends up remains persistently gray.”

Catholic news site Angelus was less measured in his reviewmixing indignation at the plot with his judgment of the overall quality of the film. “Anti-Catholic bias aside, Conclave it’s just plain bad,” the headline reads. His assessment of what he calls the “completely gratuitous twist” of the plot: “The film poked fun at the expense of these corrupt and stupid cardinals. It turns out that even God makes jokes at their expense: the savior of the church of men is actually a biological woman.”

For its part, Twitter/X/whatever-you-call-it-is-my-mind-siphoning-site had its own fun with the pulpy nature of the film about a subject one would expect to be shrouded in excess of seriousness.