Be careful what you post. One hopes that whoever came up with that tagline got a nice bonus on the Wicked Little Letters marketing campaign, as it’s one of the most ideal taglines to grace a poster in recent memory.
It promises a film with a sly sense of humour and something to say about modern habits, despite the dressings of Wicked Little Letters period setting, and the film is brimming with potential. It tells the true story – and what a delicious story it is – of a series of handwritten letters that rocked the sleepy seaside town of Littlehampton in the 1920s; letters addressed to several residents that are filled to the brim of vulgar insults and obscenities.
The story focuses on two neighbours – quiet God-fearing spinster Edith (Olivia Colman) – the woman first to receive the letters, and her neighbour – the brasher and more independent Rose (Jessie Buckley) – who quickly becomes the prime suspect due to her big personality and preference for using colourful profanities in casual conversation. Adamant that she is innocent, but with no other suspects that fit the profile, Rose soon stands to lose both her freedom and her daughter as the letters continue to escalate. Now, local WPO Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) is on the case to prove Rose’s innocence, find the culprit and ensure justice is served in Littlehampton.
The heart of the story is such a wonderful thing to stumble on for any budding filmmaker. A slice of small-town life rocked by the most scandalous thing to their Christian tastes, all the while reflecting on the kind of trolling and anonymous behaviour that has come to be a prominent detail of life on the internet. It is dripping thematic potential and the script by Jonny Sweet clearly revels in the ridiculous nature of the story and never plays the parallels to modern life too bluntly – largely letting the subtext come through from the very nature of the story.
That approach of simply letting the material speak for itself rides across much of Thea Sarrock’s light direction as well. Well crafted and intimately detailed to evoke the period, Sarrock is never particularly flashy in her approach but keeps the pace light on its feet. There is often the niggling sense that perhaps the direction and the script are resting a little too much on their laurels, what with the story at its heart being so good and the calibre of characters even better. The material as such never quite gets as biting or as funny as you would perhaps like it to, but the emotion of it all is elevated by, of course, that excellent cast.
Colman is great at exhibiting the often conflicted position Edith finds herself in, forced to point the blame at Rose by her restrictive household she still finds herself in run by her father (a delectably loathsome Timothy Spall). Jessie Buckley once again demonstrates her natural charisma effortlessly as Rose, even if her storyline hits largely the beats you’d expect. The real star of the show however is Anjana Vasan as Officer Moss. She plays the frustration she’s met with as the only woman police officer in town faced against the misogyny and pig-headedness of her male colleagues with wit and a tenacious charm. She’s also hilarious, and a big factor in bringing in all members of the ensemble together in the formal stretch which touches more on the mode of a caper once the mystery has been revealed (which wisely occurs around the halfway point).
While Wicked Little Letters is never quite as biting or as uproarious as you might hope from such an excellent true story at its centre, it is packed with an array of talent that knows how to deliver with a first-class stamp. It ultimately doesn’t probe too deep, but it’s an entertaining time nonetheless.
Wicked Little Letters is released in UK cinemas on 23rd February 2024.
Wicked Little Letters
Summary
The material as such never quite gets as biting or as funny as you would perhaps like it to, but its excellent cast offer an entertaining time nonetheless.
