SUNDANCE 2017: Capone looks at two very different films about nuns–THE LITTLE HOURS and NOVITIATE!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Park City, Utah, covering the Sundance Film Festival. Right now, I have two very different film about nuns, some of whom are extremely horny. Enjoy…


THE LITTLE HOURS



Two things writer-director Jeff Baena does well is work with large ensemble casts and ground his seemingly outrageous stories in a type of reality. With his previous two films, LIFE AFTER BETH and JOSHY, Baena grounded his stories in the present day, but with his latest, THE LITTLE HOURS, he jumps back in time to the Middle Ages, when convents were less a place for the pious and more a place where women were placed by their families because their families were too poor to afford a dowery for them to get married or they were the younger of many daughters and no marriage material for the same reasons. In other words, these were not women who were ready to give up being sexual beings just because they wore habits and were isolated from men.

Based on the 14th century short stories collection “The Decameron,” from Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, THE LITTLE HOURS features a collection of some of the great improv comedy actors working today and places them in a costume piece filmed at real castles and convents in Tuscany, all of which adds to the film authentic vibe. Granted, the performers are speaking in fairly modern tongue, which might ruin it for history buffs, but it makes it all the more hilarious. The primary nun characters are played by Alison Brie (playing your garden-variety sex-curious nun), Aubrey Plaza (the troublemaker, for reasons we find out eventually), and Kate Micucci (who might be a lesbian). Their Mother Superior is played by Molly Shannon, with a fully bearded John C. Reilly as the supervising priest, Father Tommasso.

Trouble at the convent begins when Father Tommasso must find a new servant boy to work the garden and make general repairs around the property, after Plaza’s character has scared away the previous hired hand simply for saying hello to and daring to look at the nuns. The priest hires Massetto (Dave Franco), who had previously worked for Lord Bruno (Nick Offerman, who steals the few scenes he is in) and was caught having sex with Lady Bruno. It is agreed that, to stay out of trouble, Massetto will pretend to be a deaf mute, but that doesn’t stop the sisters from noticing him or his refusal to ever button his shirts above his navel. The fact that Massetto is also a bit of a sex addict doesn’t help matters. So one by one, the nuns take turns attempting to seduce the strapping young lad, and the convent becomes a den of repressed sexuality unleashed.

As spirited and seemingly out of control as THE LITTLE HOURS gets, it also commits itself to the period and the religious doctrine of the time, and it’s that authenticity that lends the film an edge as a sophisticated comedy about drunken, horny, spiritually compromised members of a religious sect. The film has great, little moments and details that add to the period aspects of the production as much as the comedic delivery. Additional supporting players include Fred Armisen, Jemima Kirke, Adam Pally, and Paul Reiser, all of whom have great moments. And while it may seem like a crowded, ridiculous piece, Baena somehow pulls it all together into a profile of what happens when you try to suppress natural human desires.

The final act of the film may stray into the outrageous, as the story reveals exactly what has been driving some of the nuns to depravity. And while spectacle isn’t the same as humor, somehow it works here, and Baena is able to cut loose and go fully Medieval on our collective asses. By the time THE LITTLE HOURS is done, we discover that is it, in fact, a love story (a couple of them, actually), and that sweetens the pot of this delightful experiment that everyone from Mel Brooks to David Gordon Green has dabbled in over the years. Baena's love of and respect for history wins the day, and his clearly game actors seal the deal. I can’t wait for you to see this one.


NOVITIATE



Set in the wake of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (more commonly referred to as Vatacin II), the debut feature from writer-director Maggie Betts is NOVITIATE, a powerful look at the small training convent called The Sisters of Blessed Rose at a time when the church decided to enter the modern world with what some deemed wild abandoned. Just for context, Vatacin II was a gathering in the early 1960s (the first of its kind in almost 100 years) called for by Pope John XXIII, and one of its many resulting declarations was that nuns were of no more stature in the church than any other practicing Catholic. This resulted in nuns leaving convents in droves, especially younger ones, but Vatacin II also freed nuns of their cloistered lives and go do good deeds in the community. Still, for many, the idea of going through the regimen that led to being formally married to Jesus held a certain importance that no longer was looked upon by the Vatacin as anything special.

NOVITIATE, named after the period that a would-be nun undergoes prior to taking vows to determine whether she is truly ready for an isolated religious life, begins in the late 1950s and follows the path of several young women coming to the convent for different reasons. Some are there to put a troubled past behind them; others have led good, Christian lives and wish to extend that in the most substantial way possible. The story is primarily told through the eyes of Cathleen (Margaret Qualley of THE NICE GUYS and “The Leftovers”), who makes the decision at a young age to attend church and eventually become a nun despite objections from her less-than-religious mother (Julianne Nicholson), who assumes this is a phase.

The film doesn't tell a single story, but the stories of Cathleen and her fellow nuns in training over the period of several years of devoted instruction, severe punishment, and a type of thought control that only fear wielded by an old-school Reverend Mother (a relentless Melissa Leo) can bring. Some of the young women drop out—due to lack of faith, an unwillingness to give up the rest of their lives, or being a little too curious about a man’s touch—while others are pushed out for some of the same reasons. There’s an interesting subplot about Sister Mary Grace (Dianna Agron), who transfers to the convent because it has a reputation of being more strict, but as we learn more about her, it becomes clear that the temptations around her are so great that she feels a harsher environment is the only way to stay devout.

NOVITIATE is filled with wonderful young actresses who are given the chance to create complex and complicated characters, with unique issues and personalities. The real drama in the story comes when the Vatacin II decisions are handed down, some of which deal with easing corporal punishments in convents, which the Reverend Mother conveniently forgets to tell her young charges about. It’s not until the Archbishop (Denis O’Hare) shows up to lay down the (new) law that the Reverend Mother tells the young nuns just what the Church thinks of them, and nothing is the same after that.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Kat Westergaard, the movie is a different brand of coming-of-age story, but there’s no denying that’s exactly what it is. Each girl has her own unique set of flaws and must cope, overcome, or be defeated by them. Filmmaker Betts has a true empathy for her characters (even the Reverend Mother, who is one of the last of a dying breed, for better and worse), and it’s that level of compassion that makes NOVITIATE something both unique and worthy.

The film works as an examination of a lifestyle that simply doesn’t exist in the mainstream any longer, as well as both a criticism and tribute to that bygone world. Betts’s lack of judgement of certain characters might trouble some, but it also keeps the film pure from a storytelling perspective—it lays out the events and allows the viewer to assess the spiritual guidance being given or hurt being done. The film moves at its own deliberate pace, but when it reaches its finale, sometime quite moving occurs within the character and audience.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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