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

[Philodendrine]

I looked for a thread but am not very good with the search function so if there's one already please let me know. I hope it's OK to ask this question here; I know there are some v knowledgeable posters and have followed various threads over the years and learned quite a bit.

I'm interested in whether the ending of Conclave (in particular, the new Pope's genetic make-up and appearance combination) is actually possible. My understanding from watching the film is that s/he was said to be chromosomally female (so I assume XX) but appearance had been unclear at birth, had been raised male and outward appearance is consistent with that (masculine features, low voice) but had found out in adulthood they had a uterus and ovaries.

My very limited understanding of DSDs is that if there is a voice that's broken / masculine body shape consistent with male puberty, then there must be testes of some kind (whether fully formed/descended or not) or otherwise there wouldn't be testosterone to effect those puberty type changes. So having a XX dsd and uterus/ovaries wouldn't work for that scenario I wouldn't have thought.

I read somewhere that the movie differed from the book in that the book said they had a vagina (not ovaries/uterus) - which I think could work, because an outwardly apparent 'vagina' but internal male organs and an XY DSD could still produce the outward male face/voice/body appearance. But to me the movie version doesn't seem to work. Can anyone with any better knowledge than mine tell me if I'm misunderstanding things?

I've not seen it but heard about the end.

Yes it sounds like they don't have a clue about DSDs & conveniently got it wrong.

Ive read it but not seen the movie, sounds like they have changed the ending which is bloody annoying

And yes..very convenient

I don't think they worried about the biological realities of someone presenting as a masculine man while having female organs internally. It was the last card to turn over, with regard to modern dilemmas facing the church, after racism, corruption, religious extremism and a sex scandal ruled out other candidates.

I've seen it and I agree, no sense. Obviously male-normal levels of testosterone, plus a uterus (did they even say overies, I forget)? Some kind of mosaicism? I don't think that works - how do you have both a uterus and testes, how do the connections work? "Authors just decided intersex means pick your own adventure" seems more plausible than there really being an explanation.

It's a movie and speaking as an ex Catholic, it will never happen. It's just Hollywood trying to push the "trans" agenda.

It struck me as a claim of DSD but through the trans fantasy lense, using someone else's health issue as a prop for their own ideological 'make believe' agenda. It was such a poor ending.

I saw the film in an early preview so couldn't talk about it (as no one else had seen it) but it was enormously frustrating cos I called bullshit as soon as the reveal came up. Up until that point, I was really enjoying it, the music was so good in building the tension & atmosphere, the acting was fantastic, & I just felt robbed by the ending. I prefer films when you can suspend disbelief, and get engrossed in the drama. And it had me all the way through until that crap ending.

It's like the bullshit you hear on sci-fi films which you know is bollocks but if the actor or the script is good enough, you let it slide & just let the nonsense wash over you. The fantasy DSD that made no sense just burst that bubble I was in, enjoying the film & keen to finally get the big reveal.

I'm still annoyed by it 😁

As a medievalist, it just made me laugh in the cinema as the Protestants came up with a similar aprocrypha 500 years ago as fun stick to beat Roman Catholics with. They wrote pamphlets about the corruption of the Catholic church going back to the ninth century where they accidentally put a female pope on the throne in the ninth century, who of course got pregnant and got tossed into the Tiber when the Curia found out.

The pamphlet writers claimed after that cock up the papal throne has a hole in the seat so a cardinal can to an inspection to ensure any pope is intact. So when I saw the twist I just shrugged my shoulders at the progressive version of this “shocker”.

Pope Joan’s bawdy story is recounted in a novel by Lawrence Durrell as well as in a play Top Girls by Carol Churchill.

I didn’t think they were pushing a trans moment.

After all the material / storylines about the oppression of women in the church I thought it was a subversive moment about women in the Catholic Church. As in ‘hah! For all your misogyny and discrimination you now have a female born person, if only you knew it’.

And in a decision of a really stupid (IMO) ‘trans moment’ the last production of Top Girls at Liverpool Everyman had a trans woman play Pope Joan.

"You now have a female born person if only you knew it." Ain't gonna happen. Ever. Not in the Catholic Church.

O gosh, I had hoped that might be worth watching.

So far I've never seen a film with "gotcha" theology that was compelling.

I n the book it sounds like he just has cosmetic surgery. But I very much doubt he'd have looked masculine enough to pass as male. Especially if he had Particularly as he'd lived in a seminary etc, would also probably live with his priest secretary etc. (As bishops tend too). I do think the story was strong enough on its own, without the need for that twist at the end.

But this is a film. A fictional plot.

It’s a brilliant film.
IMO
A good thriller / intrigue film
Beautifully shot
Exposing plenty of hypocrisy
Including about the ill treatment of women by men, by the church
A good central moral dilemma (an ethical one, not religious)

I read the book, and as massively disappointed with the ending, which was quite obvious if you are aware of trans issues and the massive Chekov’s Gun moment.

Which is a shame, because I thought it was a great thriller with a very disappointing ending,

Not seen the film but thank you shockeditellyou for introducing me to Chekov's Gun. Every day a schoolday 👍

If you read history, Europe spent many decades expelling or fighting Islam to keep this religion at bay. During the movie, there is an Islamist car bombing which affects the Vatican and the only Cardinal who speaks out against Islamist attacks is voted out in favour of the weird cardinal who's been in the Middle East and is of an uncertain sexual orientation. Quite a distortion of history.

I haven’t read the book so it was all a surprise to me.

I think the movie was not made by Catholics. Like a grain of sand in one’s sgoe, bits irritated.

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your thoughts and knowledge. I am off to google Chekov's gun now!

@YourAmplePlumPoster Quite.

According to AI: Yes, the biological condition where someone can have both ovarian and testicular tissue is called "ovotesticular disorder of sex development" (DSD), previously known as "true hermaphroditism" - meaning an individual possesses both ovarian and testicular tissue, either in separate gonads or within a single gonad called an ovotestis; this is a very rare condition with ambiguous genitalia often present.

Key points about ovotesticular DSD:
Definition: Presence of both ovarian and testicular tissue in the same individual.

Genitalia: Can appear ambiguous, with features of both male and female genitalia.

Chromosomes: Most commonly associated with a 46,XX karyotype (female), but can vary.

Clinical presentation: May vary depending on the amount and location of ovarian and testicular tissue.

So on those grounds I suppose it would be plausible, though a vanishingly rare possibility, for somebody to have ambiguous but male-resembling genitalia and be brought up in a very modest fashion with little comparison to other men to then arrive at the point of Benitez in the movie discovering while having his appendix removed that he also had ovaries and a uterus.

https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/ovotesticular-disorder-of-sex-development/
Only about 500 reported cases, ever.

Thinking about it a bit more, I can't imagine what it would be like to be one of these 500 people. There is such a risk of differences like this making someone a "freak" and I think using this condition as a gotcha twist in a psychological thriller is, well, shaves awfully close to that risk.
I read a tweet by SwipeWright saying he thought it made most sense to think of individuals with ovotesticular DSD as not having a sex. I'm actually happy to not have an opinion on it. If we're generous and say the numbers on the Rare Diseases website mean 500 people in the USA since 1900 that's still such a small number. Case-by-case response from their own community, and the rest of us butt out and not use real people for endless thought experiments.

Not an expert by any means but this article seems to suggest true hermaphroditism is possible
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2265.1994.tb02506.x