How 'Conclave' Unexpectedly Nails What 'Emilia Perez' Misses

One of the dominant narratives of this Oscars season has been the explosive rise and embattled fall of Emilia Perez and its star, Karla Sofia Gascón. As Kayleigh recently wondered, has there been a bigger disaster of an Oscar campaign than this? Putting aside the scandal of Gascón’s bigotry, there’s also the film’s flawed portrayal of trans identity. I am far from the first person to argue that Emilia Perez is regressive in how it presents gender and transness. It’s an important conversation, but the sheer volume of discourse has obscured a fascinating fact: Emilia Perez is not the only Oscar-nominated film exploring gender fluidity. Conclave, a political thriller about a papal election, manages a surprising coup, delivering an elegantly simple reflection on gender and acceptance that surpasses Emilia Perez.

Transness in Emilia Perez is many things, but the one thing it’s not is human. The film shows little curiosity about its titular character’s interior life; treating her trans identity as a source of audacity, a symbol of freedom, or absolution for her violent past. This flattens what could have been a complex human character into something more archetypal—an emblem of trans identity rather than a trans person. The film presents its protagonist as “half man, half woman,” a reductive and regressive idea that feels more at home in a misguided episode of Sex and the City.

Emilia Perez frames transness as a magical transformation that wipes away the character’s past misdeeds as a crime boss, seemingly equating otherness with redemption. It’s a remarkably clumsy approach that ultimately dehumanizes her. Queer and trans people are still people, with flaws and complexities. We are not stripped of our foibles or deified for being part of an oppressed class — we are still people.

Surprisingly, Conclave offers a more humanistic view of gender identity. Granted, it’s not a central focus of the film and it’s a different gender identity being discussed than in Emilia Perez. Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence navigates layers of Vatican corruption as each potential pope reveals himself to be predatory, greedy, or dangerously archaic. When the true-hearted Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) is elected pope, Lawrence confronts him about a rumored medical procedure. Benitez reveals that he was born with a uterus and ovaries, a fact he only discovered after an appendectomy. The late pope had arranged for him to receive a laparoscopic hysterectomy, but Benitez ultimately canceled it, believing that God made him as he was meant to be. He has always lived as a man and sees no reason to identify otherwise.

The film presents several explosive revelations about Vatican corruption, but Benitez’s “secret” is simply his biology — an inherent fact of his existence, not a moral failing. His presence contrasts sharply with figures like Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), who represents the Church’s violent, intolerant past. Tedesco views deviations from rigid doctrine as sins, but the film positions his lack of compassion as the true failing. Meanwhile, Benitez embodies a more open-hearted and progressive vision of Christian faith, one that often gets lost in mainstream conversations about Christianity. The film asks whether Benitez’s gender identity should disqualify him from leading the Church—and its answer seems to be no.

I agree with the criticism that Conclave introduces this revelation abruptly, making it feel like a last-minute twist. But the message it delivers is beautiful: gender is fluid, and if God exists, they do not judge you for it. To frame that within a taut thriller about Vatican politics feels quietly radical. I’m not saying Conclave is a definitive text on gender, but I was surprised by the simplicity and power of its message. While Emilia Perez is a movie about a trans person, Conclave ultimately has more to say about gender identity, and it uses the Catholic Church to say it.