The Little Hours Today

Here is the bait-and-switch that makes The Little Hours brilliant. It is, quite faithfully, an adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron , a masterpiece of the early Italian Renaissance.

The Little Hours (2017) is a satirical historical comedy written and directed by Jeff Baena, loosely adapting Boccaccio’s The Decameron The Little Hours

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The Little Hours is streaming on Prime Video, Hulu, and AMC+. It is 90 minutes of blasphemous, beautiful, screaming chaos. Here is the bait-and-switch that makes The Little

At its core, the story follows Massetto, a young servant played by Dave Franco, who is forced to flee from his master after being caught in an affair with the master's wife. He seeks refuge in a local convent overseen by Father Tommasso, portrayed by John C. Reilly. To avoid detection and scandal, Massetto poses as a deaf-mute gardener, believing the disguise will allow him to hide in peace. However, he quickly realizes that the convent is far from a sanctuary of quiet devotion. It is 90 minutes of blasphemous, beautiful, screaming chaos

Unlike many historical comedies that erase queer identity, The Little Hours embraces it. Sister Ginevra (Kate Micucci) clearly has a crush on Sister Alessandra. There is a scene where the nuns "marry" each other as a joke. Later, after the Satanic orgy (yes, that happens), the lines between victims and perpetrators blur entirely. The film suggests that without patriarchal suppression, these women would just be pansexual chaos monsters—and that is beautiful.

Written in the 1350s, The Decameron follows ten nobles fleeing the Black Death. To pass the time, they tell 100 stories. The story of "Masetto of Lamporecchio" (the inspiration for The Little Hours ) is about a man who pretends to be a deaf-mute to get a job at a convent. The nuns, realizing he is "good at working," take turns sleeping with him. Eventually, the Abbess gets jealous of the other nuns hogging him, joins in, and Masetto eventually "breaks his silence" to manage the garden full-time because he’s exhausted.