At the start of Wicked Little Letters, a title card winks and says, “This story is more true than you’d think.” The film, which is based on a true story of poison pen letters scaring the Sussex coastal town of Littlehampton in the 1920s, tries to serve as a kind of ode to British eccentricity, especially a tendency for profanity. In addition, it shows a country reeling from the horrors of World War I and poised to undergo a social revolution as the Suffragettes persisted in their fight for women’s suffrage.
Olivia Colman’s character, Edith Swan, is a devout member of her community who still resides with her elderly parents. An exciting game of whist is her idea of a crazy evening. Her neighbor Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), who just moved to the area from Ireland, is a loving mother, a drinker, and a free-spirited individual. When Edith accuses Rose of sending her a string of witty, derogatory anonymous letters, the most recent of which refers to Edith as a “sad, stinky bitch” and a “foxy-arsed old whore,” the curtain-twitching escalates into a full-fledged conflict and even a national news event.
In actuality, everything works better when it veers more toward drama and societal criticism than humor.
Screenwriter Jonny Sweet is too dependent on the letters from the outset, and while some of them are humorously florid, almost poetic, the majority of them make people titter rather than chuckle. It’s all a little bit strange at times, like an Ealing Comedy or Paddington movie with more profanity and less humor.
Hugh Skinner, Lolly Adefope, Joanna Scanlan, and other well-known British comedians play various oddballs in the movie, although their performances are underutilized due to the jokes’ lackluster quality. While portraying a policewoman who believes Rose has been set up, Anjana Vasan makes an effort, but most of the time she just scoffs at the incompetence of her fellow officers.
In actuality, everything works better when it veers more toward drama and societal criticism than humor. As Edith’s controlling father, Timothy Spall is believable terrifying—a narrow-minded guy enraged by a world that is changing. Despite playing a less fascinating main character, Buckley is nevertheless captivating as a young woman who has the guts to be noisy, sexual, and flawed. Edith sniffs, “She’s horrible, and she’s what we thought would happen after the war.”
It should come as no surprise that Olivia Colman skillfully improves the worse material—after all, she made her start in comedies like Peep Show and Green Wing. She has an innate sense of humor, and when Edith is in her hands, she is both pliable and spiteful, condescending and conceited, and enamored of her own martyrdom and recent celebrity.