Has anyone seen the movie Conclave and would be happy to talk about the ending with me

Life will be imitating art soon, judging by the news coming out of the Vatican.
RIP in advance, it doesn't look good, and the Habemus Papam machine will be gearing up already...

If you're tempted to go to the newly opened up Saudi Arabia for a holiday, don't bother. They want the female tourists to mask up and wear a sack. Some holiday!

I despise the lot of them. They can do one.

By the way,all religions are patriarchal and misogynist but in the UK we're only allowed to criticise the Christian ones. The others are hands off in case of accusations of racism. Which is why we're not making any progress.

Imagine making a movie like that about an Imam or Muslim theme. Hollyweird feels free to insult the Catholic Church with its weird hang ups about trans people. It would NEVER dare film anything like that about Islam for fear of consequences.

Yes, I understand it and that wasn't what I was saying. They can also have other variations where it can be ambiguous what sex they are at birth, or other things. I did study that topic in university years ago. I didn't see the issue with the new pope.

But intersex doesn’t mean that, @farmlife2 The “hermaphrodite” with both sets of genitalia is an ancient fantasy.

People with DSD or VSD. - differences/variations of sexual development are either male or female genetically, but have a distortion or variation from the standard XX or XY. chromosome make up.

They might have genitalia that are underdeveloped or sexual organs which are missing eg no uterus.

I thought they were male but born intersex, with genitalia that had features of both.

This.

Plus a modern playing around with the myth of Pope Joan.

I didn’t mind it - I thought that the ending was the final twist on the politics of this hugely patriarchal church and just showed how silly they are …

I (stupid me) didn’t realise there’s a book on which the film is based. Interesting.

Thanks. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotesticular_syndrome#Prevalence

The Brutalist had an Intermission!

(it’s 3.5 hours long)

There aren't any intermissions these days. Something from the fifties and sixties

I saw the film and thought it was very good, the detail discussed here was lost on me l

Although I was disappointed that there was no one at the intermission with a tray of ice-cream tubs - in fact there was no intermission at all!

The film said he'd been raised at a boy and been through adolescence in a seminary where the culture was 'modest', so presumably hadn't had any kind of comparison with other boys and men, and that during surgery to remove his appendix the fact that he had a uterus had been discovered. He had intended to have a hysterectomy and resign the priesthood, but the Pope wouldn't accept his resignation and had made him a cardinal 'in pectori' (i.e. in secrecy).

The book says he was raised as a boy, but never shaved, the vestments were all too large, and he had been booked in for surgery to correct a fusion of the labia and a clitoropexy, but did not attend. So, female?
What did the film say?

The entire movie was very compelling up until the surprise twist at the end which just ruined it for me. I was brought up with a Jewish mother and Catholic father so think I know a bit about conflict! This didn't cut it.

I saw this film and really enjoyed it. I’m very glad about this thread though, because my initial thought was that the ending seemed impossible - to have evident male characteristics eg voice, face shape etc, and also an actual uterus. I did a lot of googling to try to find out what this condition would be. But I found nothing that matched. So I am pleased to see that this is because nothing does. And also that what’s in the book (which I havn’t read) actually is plausible. Seems odd that the film-makers didn’t just stick with that. And clearly did no research to check that what they suggested instead might ever happen. Although if they had stuck to the book plot it might have been difficult to find a suitable actor that didn’t just immediately give the fact away of the character not being male. Easier in a book!

Ps also I love Isabella Rossellini so she deserves it for other things, but amazing you can get a supporting actress nomination for about 4 lines of dialogue and 5 mins of screen time!

Glad you posted this as I thought the same. I thought the ending not just biologically implausible (whereas the book extract, which I haven’t read but someone kindly posted, does make sense) but purely from a narrative point of view a bit weak.

by which I mean not so much the twist as the fact that one very short speech suddenly made everyone vote for him, despite the fact that he turned up basically unvetted and no one knew his opinions on anything at all! Friend I went with who has read book said it was a bit more gradual there so it’s a screen play thing I guess

As always, these case studies of extremely rare people with DSDs are interesting but not really explanatory of the magic people want to make use of in fiction! The case linked above has, like many with that DSD, a Müllerian duct remnant, but that's not by any stretch of the imagination a uterus, which the film character was said to have. IANAMD but in basic developmental what-connects-to-what terms, testes, even undescended ones, plus a uterus, seems to me likely to be an impossible combination. No testes implies it's not plausible to have normal male levels of testosterone - which the film character clearly did (voice, body shape, craggy face). So yeah, fiction, let's enjoy it as such.

Two of the articles above are more recent, so someone didn't tell the authors!

Ok, thanks. Yes, it is misleading.

I think True Hermaphroditism was replaced with ovotesticular syndrome or ovotestis around 2006 onwards because the initial label was misleading.

That was exactly my issue with short article that was posted. As far as I know, true hermaphroditism is as I described - the ability of an individual to both impregnate and gestate. I don't know how it's being defined in those studies.

These articles all refer to "true hermaphrodites". I don't know how that is defined. Given that I've heard the definition of male and female is determined by the gametes their bodies are designed to produce, how are male and female defined when the person produces neither and their phenotype displays ambiguous or mixed sex genitalia? Anyone know? Not an expert, have I misunderstood?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10693380/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4542431/#R2

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?journal=Am%20J%20Med%20Genet&title=SRY%20gene%20transferred%20to%20the%20long%20arm%20of%20the%20X%20chromosome%20in%20a%20Y-positive%20XX%20true%20hermaphrodite&volume=90&publication_year=2000&pages=25-28&pmid=10602113&doi=10.1002/(sici)1096-8628(20000103)90:1%3C25::aid-ajmg5%3E3.0.co;2-5&

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Clinical%20and%20anatomical%20spectrum%20in%20XX%20sex%20reversed%20patients&publication_year=1994&author=C.%20Boucekkine&author=J.E.%20Toublanct&author=N.%20Abbas