Jude Law interprets the pope Pius XIII. – HBO
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while filming, like a god the beginning of the reign of pope Pius XIII, a young pope, american, fundamentalist, despotic and neurotic in The Young Pope, Paolo Sorrentino tries the devil. The series of the Italian filmmaker, acclaimed by the british press, not only has praise in the Italian press are christian or conservative. “That the sovereign pontiff to urge a priest to rape the sacrament of confession is a naughtiness to the limit of blasphemy,” growls-t-on, for example, in Famiglia Cristiana. Why is the new original creation of Canal + co-produced with Sky and HBO, and aired this Monday at 20h55, risk shake off the bigots ?

A pontiff, far from being an angel

The Young Priest will appeal to catholics ? “Yes, if they look at it with emotion that deserves a table. (…) If they expect a reading text, on the other hand, then not, ” announces from the outset the director awarded the Oscar for the Best foreign film The Grande Bellezza in the press kit of the show. Lenny Belardo, the baptismal name of the pope embodied by Jude Law – which is damn well the cassock – smokes more than he does smiles and eats Coca-Cola Cherry. He is young, but ultraconservateur, while being avant-garde and unpredictable. Abandoned child, Lenny Belardo suffers from a lack of emotional, but never obvious, never an ounce of mercy. Worse still, if he prays, he doubted the existence of God. “I am a contradiction. I am God, ” says-t it.

Two homilies apocalyptic

” What have we forgotten ? You. The pleasure, the joy, the love without the obligation to procreate, condoms, homosexuals “, launches into a homily dreamlike Pius XIII, just elected by the conclave. “I will not be more close to you than God. I am the servant of God, not yours “, pronounces, in reality, the young pope at the balcony of Saint Peter’s basilica. “Why not imagine a pontiff who is the polar opposite of pope Francis ? “asked the filmmaker. “A man who will be a role with the responsibilities overwhelming and that the addresses with an apparent lack of good sense and childishness pronounced,” he continues. For the developer, The Young Priest embodies ” the germ of a fundamentalist catholic that we exclude a priori, just as, fifty years ago, we would have excluded the risk of islamic fundamentalism. “

A Curia that does not prevail not in paradise

” The subject is incredible, Paolo Sorrentino has his detractors, as we know, ” said Caroline Benjo of Haut et Court, who has co-produced the series with Wildside and Mediapro. If the election of this young man to the throne of st. Peter could be seen as a coup in the media orchestrated by the College of cardinals, one quickly learns that these Machiavellis cacochymes have elected a pope whom they did not know “. “A world of men without children who manage an immaterial power is much more rich in surprises that the policy of any country,” says Paolo Sorrentino to those who compare The Young Priest in House of Cards.

” The free time, thing that does not lack to the Holy see, is an endless source of irony, ” says the director. And the pope is not the only character that could speak. Between a high dignitary of the church which is his coming out, a cardinal who fantasizes about the Venus of Willendorf and a priest who breaks the sacrament of confession, the Vatican, the ” city-State full of souls who have ever lived “, The Young Priest close to a crisis of faith. “What interests me, is to speak of men, in the sense of human beings, not saints or heroes,” said the filmmaker. Carried by a casting impeccable (Diane Keaton, Silvio Orlando, Cécile de France), The Young Priest is the image of the cinema of Paolo Sorrentino’s all at once an opera visual baroque, fantastical, deliberately irreverent and scathing. In short, a series divine !

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