We Have a Pope (2011)

Habemus Papam, released in English as We Have a Pope, finds Nanni Moretti in a contemplative mood. A conclave deadlocks. A compromise cardinal, Melville, is elevated against his own judgment. He accepts the office, then collapses before the balcony appearance with a panic attack, and the College of Cardinals, sealed inside by canon law, is left to wait. A psychoanalyst is summoned. The psychoanalyst brings his ex-wife. The new pope slips his minders and wanders Rome. The cardinals play volleyball.

The film's cultural inventory is spare. The cast is a wall of white-haired European men in scarlet, and the only woman of note is the ex-wife analyst, who appears to deliver a diagnosis and then vanish. There is no racial subject, no environmental theme, no economic critique, no body-image discourse, no queer subtext. The Vatican is treated as a workplace with bad management and one reluctant employee. What the film does carry is a mental-health thread: Melville's panic and depression are named and treated, though Moretti frames them as a crisis of faith and vocation, never as an identity to be affirmed. The closest the film comes to a message is a single line suggesting the Church needs a leader who will bring change. Critics agreed it lands as an offhand remark. The storyteller overpowers the moralist.

So we are left with a gentle, melancholy comedy about institutional weight and a man who does not want the job. It regards religion with curiosity instead of contempt, and regards its audience as adults. On the modern scale it registers almost nothing. A quiet film. A clean ledger.