It wasn’t on purpose but the three movies I’ve watched in theaters this week all had religious themes: Memoir of a Snail has a subplot about an evil church, Conclave is, well, about a conclave, and Paddington in Peru features a crazy nun played by Olivia Colman. What’s the point of talking about this? None, but I thought it was funny. Anyway, let’s get down to some quick reviews of these films.
Memoir of a Snail
The first impression is never definitive but always important, and unfortunately my first contact with Memoir of a Snail was rather unpleasant, the fault of a deliberately ugly art direction, common for director Adam Elliot, that immediately put me off. A matter of personal taste rather than a fault of the movie, however. Nonetheless, I managed to get into the story after a while, rather seduced by the sibling relationship developed, which offers some fine moments of emotion: a pity, then, that it drifted away from it midway.
I’m rather skeptical about the second half of the movie, and the first-person narration throughout, which gives the impression of an inventory of the misfortunes that befall poor Grace. It’s an almost miserabilistic story, a Rougon-Macquart type beat, which makes its main character suffer of every possible thing in order to elicit emotion from the viewer.
Grace is never defined by anything other than the things that happen to her, and this ultimately desensitized me, at least until the beautiful finale, which managed to drew a few tears from me. Even if, in the end, I found that the moral of the story wasn’t that far removed from the life advice in the self-help books that the main character had railed against earlier in the film.
It’s possible that I didn’t have the right emotional readiness to appreciate it fully on the day I watched it, but I’m rather disappointed because I went into this with high hopes.
Quiche rating: 2.5/5
Conclave
Going into this, I wasn’t sure that a classic story about a conclave would manage to be interesting during 120 minutes, especially considering that I’m not a big fan of the previous movies of director Edward Berger. But I was wrong: I was glued to my seat, mostly due to the fact that the story is full of drama and suspense, as we discover more and more about the cardinals and unravel mystery after mystery, kinda like a TV series condensed into a film. As one review on Letterboxd pointed out, “divas in long dresses gossiping with each other trying to snatch a win… this is basically rupaul’s drag race.“
Conclave works for the same reasons that All Quiet on the Western Front didn’t: the highly-mannered, precise direction that made the war sterile manages here to instill a tension from start to finish that makes the story exciting to follow. At times, there are a few unnecessary effects (the slow-motion and whispering after the homily, for example), but nothing that detracts from the overall experience.
All the actors are great (Ralph Fiennes definitely didn’t stole his Oscar nomination) and give the impression of a timeless “actors’ film“, that could’ve been made at any time in history, reinforced by the fact that it’s almost a huis-clos. This is probably gonna become a classic of the parent movie genre (you know, those movies that your parents makes you watch with them because they are well-made and serious but mostly feature their favorite actors), even if I find it rather superficial, with well-written dialogue but a message that isn’t as deep or intelligent as it thinks it is.
Quiche rating: 3.5/5
Paddington in Peru
After the critical and commercial success of Paddington 2, director Paul King and writer Simon Farnaby left the ship to make the delightful Wonka. That didn’t stop StudioCanal for launching the production of a third movie but without King, the film unfortunately doesn’t work as well and loses a lot of its charm, both visually and in terms of story.
The strength of the first two movies was presenting a cute character having a cute, everyday adventure that never shied away from being fun, silly and over-the-top, but Paddington in Peru is clearly more of a proper adventure movie, and it doesn’t work as well. This is partly because of the stakes presented and a much more conventional narrative structure, but also because the film feels like it’s holding back on the silliness all the time, wasting both its jokes and its actors (Antonio Banderas and Olivia Colman should have been used much better, even if they undoubtedly provide the film’s best scenes).
I laughed very little and rarely felt very involved, as if this were no longer Paddington but a sub-Jungle Cruise. Nothing to be ashamed of in the grand scheme of things, and I think a younger audience will appreciate it (even if the one in my particular theater wasn’t very involved), but it’s by far the weakest of the trilogy, to the point of making Paddington 1 look like Paddington 2 in comparison.
I also hate it when a film decides to recast an important character without bothering to justify it in the script – when it’s possible, of course. A kindly mother-in-law trying to fit in with a family could have provided the emotional anchor for a screenplay that’s woefully lacking in one.
I’m not sure it was the right decision to make a third installment after the undeniable success of the second, and even less sure that Dougal Wilson, a director whose greatest achievement is Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction” video was the right person for the job.
quiche.cafe 
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