The Little Hours

The Little Hours, a happily deranged comedy from writer-director Jeff Baena, doesn’t always work, but you have to admire the movie’s exuberant madness. It is by turns a Monty Python-esque period spoof, an improv comedy wet dream (the dialogue is mostly extemporized, the setting deliberately anarchic), and a philosophical meditation on the nature of existence. (It’s based on two stories from The Decameron.) The film is set in a Medieval convent somewhere in the Italian countryside, where three nuns, named Sister Alessandra, Sister Fernanda, and Sister Genevra (Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, and Kate Micucci, respectively) experience a sexual awakening. These three nuns look out upon their drab, cloistered little world with a kind of yearning that they can barely put into words. Then along comes the hunky young serf Massetto, (Dave Franco), who’s on the run from his angry master, Lord Bruno (Nick Offerman) after sleeping with the man’s wife (the delightful, snarky Lauren Weedman, whose dialogue is the equivalent of an endless series of glaring eyerolls).  

The three sisters are all immediately drawn to Massetto, partly because he’s pretending to be deaf and mute, a ruse devised by the priest (John C. Reilly) who runs the convent. Massetto’s silence is for his own protection, against the volcanic temper of Sister Fernanda. Early in the movie, when she and the others are passing by the previous gardener, she unleashes her comic fury, hurling curse words and turnips at him because she dislikes the convent food. The allegedly deaf-mute Massetto, non-threatening yet smoldering, emboldens the women to act on long-repressed sexual desires.

Then again, what would you do if the puppy-eyed, svelte Dave Franco showed up at your doorstep? Genuflect by day, and carouse by night, of course. The sisters, it turns out, are far more evolved than perhaps even they realize. It’s as if they’ve been waiting for something to set their desires into motion. And Sister Fernanda, in particular, isn't content with washing garments and tending the garden and saying her morning prayers: When she whips up a love potion using belladonna weed, she has more on her mind than romance: Sister Fernanda is part of a coven of witches, and she has her eye on Massetto as a potential sacrifice for an upcoming fertility ritual (!).

Even though The Little Hours can be jarring in its tonal shifts (the movie may be guilty of trying to be too many things), it’s never boring, and the performances have an other-worldly quality, partly because the dialogue is all modern. This anachronistic touch works especially because Baena doesn’t rely on it too much. The fact that Plaza, Brie, and Micucci talk like women from 2017 who’ve been transported back to 1398 (they curse like sailors, or perhaps teenagers posting selfies on Instagram), is a gimmick, but not the film's only source of comedy. It’s just a device made to loosen things up, so that Baena and his cast can explore and make fun of the world they've created, including the ways that the characters (and by extension, most humans) compartmentalize their lives. For example: John C. Reilly's priest, who’s in love with the soft-spoken mother superior (Molly Shannon). Their love isn’t portrayed as sleazy or clandestine; it’s longing and tender, and almost tragic in the way the romance in Brokeback Mountain was tragic, because it’s arbitrarily forbidden by the culture in which they live. The performances alone make The Little Hours worth seeing. All three of the leads seem to be harboring little sticks of comic dynamite inside them, and you never know when the next explosion will happen. All you can do is wait for one of them to get that look in her eyes.

FRESNO A METAPHOR FOR COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR IN NEW JUDY GREER COMEDY

Judy Greer, who’s equally adept at piercing drama and electric comic lunacy, finally gets a vehicle in the form of Addicted to Fresno. Greer plays Shannon, who’s down on her luck, to say the least, and has taken up with her well-intentioned sister Martha (Natasha Lyonne), who’s gotten her a job where she works, cleaning rooms at a sleazy motel in Fresno, a city that has embedded its magnetic funk on the two women. Fresno, in fact, becomes a metaphor for the kind of horrible things we do to ourselves over and over again: Shannon is a sex addict, and she has little regard for her own personal safety or well-being as she jumps from one sleazy guy to another.

Shannon has been going to a twelve-steps program to fight her sex addiction, but it’s not helping. When Martha catches Shannon in the act with a particularly gross motel guest, Shannon panics and pretends he’s raping her. A struggle ensues, and somehow, Shannon kills the hapless horn-dog. The rest of the movie follows the sisters’ increasingly desperate attempts to dispose of the body, which they’ve hidden inside one of their big blue sanitation carts, and into which they continuously feed a generous hale of ice cubes.

Addicted to Fresno falters occasionally as a movie, sometimes running out of steam. At times, its story and execution feel only a few notches above the kind of readily available and unwatchable junk that Netflix provides to their instant-streaming customers. But it’s also very, very funny, and the performances of Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne elevate the material and give it depth. These are both strong actresses who are funny, and it’s their strength as performers and their characters’ bond as sisters that improves Addicted to Fresno immeasurably.

Moreover, director Jamie Babbit and screenwriter Karey Dornetto have created a tough-minded comedy, not one of these soft-in-the-middle genre flicks that turns predictably syrupy at the end. As a result, it's full of pleasantly unexpected moments. The surprising elements of this movie that make it, ultimately, a winner, for me. And yes, it’s an R-rated comedy and it’s about a sex addict. So you can expect a good amount of vulgarity next to your sisters-bonding-despite-their-differences plot line. But Greer shapes Shannon into a real human being. She’s not just a “slut” or a “nympho.” Somewhere along the film’s madcap travails, Shannon admits she’s tired of having sex, but the pain and disappointment of having sex is better than the emptiness of not doing it. Kind of profound, and much deeper than anything we got out of Trainwreck.

Natasha Lyonne’s Martha provides perfect balance to Judy Greer’s interminable screw-up Shannon. Martha isn’t exactly the picture of success, but she’s independent enough to feel a little superior toward her sister. Of her small, humble house and her very humble job, she says “It’s my American dream.” There's a kind of dumb optimism in that statement that feels distinctly American and Lyonne delivers it not with tongue-in-cheek but with whole-hearted pluckiness. And Martha has her own issues too: She’s been unable to get over a recent break-up, and she’s as dependent on her sister Shannon’s screw-ups as Shannon is on Martha’s dependability.

The film is peopled with amusing supporting characters: Aubrey Plaza (perhaps not as funny as her character in Parks and Recreation) plays Martha’s kickboxing instructor and love interest; Ron Livingston plays Shannon’s married therapist-boyfriend, who’s somehow shocked (after leaving his wife for Shannon) that Shannon isn’t interested in pursuing a committed relationship; Fred Armisen and Allison Tolman play a couple who run a pet cemetery, who blackmail Shannon and Martha for 25,000 dollars once they discover their secret; Molly Shannon plays the sister of the deceased motel guest; and Malcolm Barrett plays Eric, another motel employee, and the first guy for whom Shannon feels more than a simply carnal attraction. There’s a hilarious scene in which he recites a delightful poem about the awfulness of Fresno, and Shannon concurs with alacrity.

That’s probably the best joke of this movie: the whole film is a happy little riff on how rotten Fresno is. But as anti-Fresno as it is, there’s some kind of knowing affection here, an affection not far off from John Waters’ love of his hometown of Baltimore, which may be the Fresno of the East coast. Readers, I recommend this one, especially if you’re a fan of either Judy Greer or Natasha Lyonne.

There’s also an hilarious scene in which the sisters try to rob an adult toy store (run by Clea Duvall). Shannon muses: “Who would have thought a sex store was such a low cash enterprise?” And another—the film’s most delightfully offensive scene—in which the ladies rob a bar mitzvah, at which the honored 13-year-old boy performs a raunchy Jewish-gangsta rap. I’ve never seen that before.