Conclave review – Ralph Fiennes is almighty in thrilling papal tussle

Fiennes gives one of the performances of the year as a cardinal assailed on all sides in Edward Berger’s elegant adaptation of Robert Harris’s Vatican bestseller

There are some gloriously showy performance flourishes to be found in Edward Berger’s gripping papacy thriller Conclave. Prising open the doors of the Vatican to reveal the rituals and cynical machinations by which a new pope is chosen, it contains the most passive-aggressive curtsey in cinema history, delivered by the all-seeing Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini). This comes just after the good sister has delivered a truth bomb to the assembled cardinals, and it is so weighted with sarcasm that you wonder that her knees don’t buckle.

Then there’s Sergio Castellitto, playing the hardline Catholic traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco, whose pointed use of his vape at key moments of tension conveys more savage animosity and raw ambition than whole pages of dialogue. Even the silences are loaded with drama. As unofficial Vatican mole Monsignor O’Malley, Brian F O’Byrne has a delicious repertoire of fraught pauses – long seconds of nerve-jangling anticipation as he wrestles with his conscience before deciding to spill the tea about yet another of the eminences’ eminently regrettable little secrets.

In UK and Irish cinemas