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Bad habits

This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival was subdued, but livened up no end by the sight of Aubrey Plaza swearing her head off while dressed as a nun. The language emerging from underneath that wimple in The Little Hours could curdle the milk, but the register of the film is distinctly old fashioned compared to most current US comedies and their giggling Puritan vibes about the carnal. There was a time when sex comedies were vigorous and spicy because the topic was illuminating, rather than just because people were salaciously goosed by it, and The Little Hours is the first film in a while to remember — largely by drawing on a story from around 1350 written in the shadow of a slow and painful death. I watched it for Critic’s Notebook, pondering the profane while bewitched by the witches.

I also watched Final Portrait, Stanley Tucci’s very affectionate portrait of Alberto Giacometti which makes the old boy seem impossible but also has no doubts about his genius. Tucci’s well documented love of art in general and this artist in particular stops the film being dull, but it is reverential to a fault, and some of the artistic choices are a bit more bemusing than probably intended. I am, though, increasingly a fan of Armie Hammer’s nice line in needlessly-stressed decency. Lumbering any actor with the label of old-school stylist is the kiss of death, but Hammer is pretty much one of those. A review of Final Portrait is also up at Critic’s Notebook.

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