It’s Papal Conclave Week here at the Movie Gourmet, and my weekly DVD pick is last year’s Italian comedy We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam) – also available on Netflix Instant. In We Have a Pope, the papal conclave elects a Pope, but just as he is about to be introduced to the faithful, he cries out and shrinks from the balcony. He is having a severe panic attack, and the Curia secretly sends for a psychiatrist to get him in emotional shape for a public appearance. After some awkward attempts at individual talk therapy (with the therapist and patient surrounded by cardinals), the Pope-elect bolts from the Vatican and runs off on his own, pursued by frantic Pope-handlers.
If this premise weren’t funny enough,the psychiatrist himself can probably be diagnosed as a narcissist and becomes obsessed with organizing the cardinals into a volleyball tournament. Another shrink diagnoses every patient with parental deficit. The cardinals are a quirky and flawed bunch, and the Vatican bureaucrats are suitably sinister.
The troubled Pope is played by the great French actor Michel Piccoli (Contempt, Belle De Jour, La belle noiseuse). Piccoli embues his character with humanity and authenticity – he is not a weak or crazy man, just a good and able guy who is unable to shoulder great responsibility at this stage of his life. Writer-director Nanni Moretti plays the shrink and is himself very funny.
We Have a Pope makes a fine double feature with the sober documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, currently playing on HBO.