The movie begins with a conclave for the Pope is dead. The famous smoke turns black twice but finally the cardinals manage to choose a Pope. The problem is that cardinal Melville, played by Michel Piccoli, doesn't want to be The One, so the film actually contradicts the "habemus papam" phrase, as the newly elected Pope can't cope with the job and decides to run away; the cardinals remain helpless(the papal curie even asks a shrink to help!) and everybody is left Popeless.
The film is brillant, often touching and funny (irreverent as a comedy must be but not at all the red-hot movie against Vatican and Catholic Church that one would expect from a leftie like Moretti), and Michel Piccoli is fantastic. To think he played Dom Juan so many years ago, and now he's Pope!
Habemus Papam isn't a film about religion, rather a film on the wish for freedom, illusions, frustation, acting and imitation -- actually it is a sort of movie fugue considering the film's structure and the character's mental state. Moretti mocks the media and communications advisers, makes fun of psychoanalysis and shrinks, and, above all, of himself, and plays with the idea that The Vatican is a big theatre where, when a Pope dies, the show must go on...as long as nobody is miscast.
At the end of the day, art is the answer, or at least a place to find refuge when it's too much. Nanni Moretti tried to fight against Berlusconi and must be very disheartened as nothing has changed in his country, and he doesn't believe in Heaven, but he has found his haven and it's a nice one.
