Venice Film Festival 2016: The Young Pope, review – Jude Law gives best ever performance

Jude Law is both magnetic and unreadable as a newly elected 47-year-old Pope, says David Sexton, and Diane Keaton is fantastic too
David Sexton5 September 2016

The Young Pope is barely a film, instead just the first two parts of a 10 part television drama for Sky, starting next month — but it’s the first television written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, Youth) and it wonderfully preserves his lush, visually stunning and entranced aesthetic, while adapting to the demands of the serial genre — near sitcom, even.

Jude Law, in his best ever performance, both magnetic and unreadable, plays the newly elected 47-year-old Pope, American Lenny Belardo.

From a mysterious background, he takes the name Pope Pius XIII and wreaks havoc in the corrupt, complacent factions of the Vatican: smoking, demanding a Cherry Coke Zero for breakfast and completely outfoxing those, such as Cardinal Voiello (Silvio Orlando) who think they can manage him.

He’s intransigent, irritable and vindictive, he warns — and he appoints as his special adviser the hardly less formidable chain-smoking American nun who raised him, Sister Mary (Diane Keaton, fantastic). So this is The Godfather — except, outrageously, it really is the Godfather. A treat in store.

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