Manipulation

Do you believe in conspiracy theories? It’s a common question but a difficult one to answer, because everybody attaches a slightly different meaning to it. One might think first of obviously far-fetched ideas like the Earth being flat, vaccines containing microchips or aliens giving people anal probes, but there are other kinds of conspiracies, and to suggest that they never exist in real life is equally ridiculous. This handsomely shot thriller by Czech director David Balda posits the idea of a conspiracy surrounding a secret order within the Catholic Church. The trouble – as with the works of Dan Brown – is that the history of the Catholic Church is so riven with secret orders that it’s hard to see why this one should merit special attention.

We begin in Bologna, where teenager Matteo (Radoslav Gavlas) is being inducted into the aforesaid cult, in accordance with his family heritage, its loyalty to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Old men wear flowing robes and speak about their great purpose, which is apparently nearing its completion, though we never really learn anything about what that purpose is, in a film which suffers from an irritating lack of specificity throughout. Gavlas has the kind of prettiness that some teenagers go for and one imagines that this will be the film’s key attraction, though it doesn’t seem to know how to sell it, with large stretches where he doesn’t appear at all.

There are a lot of capable actors here, from James Faulkner to Predrag Bjelac, but the flat, generic dialogue gives them little to get to grips with. It’s as if the skeleton of a thriller has been constructed – and soundly enough – but no effort has been made to flesh it out. We follow Matteo over time as he becomes more deeply enmeshed in the cult and, being new, finds different factions taking an interest in what he first imagines is his talent, before he realises that he’s simply a piece on a board. His success at gaining ground within one faction by pleasing the right people is potentially compromised by his romantic relationship with Anna (Anna Čtvrtníčková), who belongs to another, but the higher he climbs, the more he gets the impression that this is a place he doesn’t want to be at all.

In a fully developed film, this romance would add flavour and generate tension, but here it does little of either as it’s hard to see what the two see in each other beyond superficial aesthetic appeal. Neither reveals much of a personality. The film uses the familiar formula whereby they are at odds to begin with (mostly thanks to his behaviour – there is tedious misogyny on display throughout) but then spontaneously overcome that. It’s unconvincing because we don’t see any mechanism behind that. The same problem repeats itself in the film’s philosophical battles, further sapping its energy, the only exception being when we are in the presence of a bad guy who huffs like Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth but without the actual gas – something so out of context that it simply feels absurd.

The film’s locations are a feast for the eyes. It has access to some stunning Renaissance-era buildings, and there’s great complementary work from production designer Petr Zeman and colourist Tomáš Chudomel. The audio work is also of a high calibre. All the elements of a good film are here except for depth, distinctiveness and meaning.

Reviewed on: 31 Oct 2026