The story is set in motion when the convent’s handsome, young, and perpetually terrified handyman, Massetto (Dave Franco), is forced to flee after being caught in an affair with the powerful Lord Bruno’s (Nick Offerman) wife. Seeking refuge, Massetto ends up at the convent, where a friendly local priest, Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly in a dual role as both Mother Superior and the priest—a deliberate, absurdist choice), suggests he hide there by pretending to be a deaf-mute gardener named “Brother Alexander.” The logic, as Father Tommasso explains, is that a deaf-mute can neither hear the nuns’ confessions nor gossip about them, posing no threat to their vows of chastity.
Released in 2017, The Little Hours is a unique and uproarious comedy that defies easy categorization. Directed and written by Jeff Baena, the film takes the bare-bones narrative framework from the first story of the third day of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, The Decameron , and injects it with a distinctly modern, foul-mouthed, and stoner-comedy sensibility. The result is a film that feels both ancient and anarchic, a period piece where nuns gossip like mean girls, curses fly with abandon, and the sacred and the profane collide in a convent walled off from the Black Death-ravaged world outside.
Of course, the plan backfires spectacularly. The nuns, particularly the hot-headed Fernanda and the curious Alessandra, soon become obsessed with the handsome, silent gardener. Their repressed desires erupt in a series of increasingly chaotic encounters. Fernanda’s attempts to seduce him range from clumsy aggression to outright physical assault, while Alessandra uses him as a pawn in her petty rivalries. The film’s central comic engine is Massetto’s desperate, silent panic as he is dragged into closets, threatened, seduced, and forced to listen to the nuns’ most profane confessions—all while maintaining his mute charade.
The film is set in a small, sleepy convent in Garfagnana, Italy, circa 1347. The convent is a hotbed of simmering resentments, sexual frustration, and profound boredom. The small community of nuns is led by the weary, pragmatic, and often tipsy Mother Superior (a brilliant deadpan performance by John C. Reilly, in a role originally written for a woman). Her charges include the volatile and perpetually enraged Sister Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza), the sweet but impressionable Sister Ginevra (Kate Micucci), and the gossipy, self-absorbed Sister Alessandra (Alison Brie). They are served by a beleaguered groundskeeper, the mute dwarf Donato (an uncredited Fred Armisen).
