Wicked Little Letters: Uneven but compelling and amusing retelling of bizarre events. ⭐⭐⭐

Rob Ryan

In the town of Littlehampton England some 100 years ago shortly after WW1, certain members of the community started receiving letters in their post containing a lot of personal attacks, insults and more importantly, a whole barrage of F and C bombs, more than a small British town in the early 1900s could handle. The first victim is Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman) a heavily religious woman who lives with her elderly parents, controlling and bigoted Edward (Timothy Spall) and his wife Victoria (Gemma Jones). Who could be responsible for inflicting poor Edith with such animosity and profanity through these letters? Their answer, their neighbour, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) a loud and rambunctious Irish Immigrant who lives with her daughter (Alisha Weir) and current partner(Malachi Kirby). Their evidence? Not only does the language bear resemblance to the vocabulary Rose spouts on a daily basis but her and Edith had a brief friendship that ended abruptly due to a rift in their connection, mostly inflicted by Edward, as a woman as loud and as outspoken as Rose is a concept he can't grasp.

With all the supposed evidence in place, it looks like the police have Rose dead to rights. They have a possible motive, the language rings similar, Case closed! Never mind that Rose would have a lot to loose if she where to do something as stupid as risk her lively hood and custody of her kid by writing a load of harassment. Never mind the hand writing displayed in the letters bears no resemblance to Rose's, that kind of evidence doesn't stand in a court of law. But the newly appointed "Woman police officer" (Anjana Vasan) is not convinced that Rose is the culprit. Unfortunately it's not up to her to decide when a case is properly solved, but that isn't going to stop her from getting to the bottom of this unusual case that is ruffing the feathers of the entire town.

The trailers for this film do a very good job of giving you a decent understanding of the premise but appropriately misled you into thinking in a certain way about the characters before the film pulls the rug under you and stops being a mystery film. Without spoiling anything the film goes in a direction that changes your initial expectation and perspective of certain characters, at that point the film becomes an almost gripping look at what people do with themselves when they become suppressed for so long, what happens when they don't have an outlet to sort out their issues or their frustrations, especially if it's a woman living during rise the suffragette movement. All these subversions put it above your typical mystery drama without undermining the stakes at play.

But I imagine the audience for this film is here for the profane language and by extension the comedic aspect, there was certainly a load of laughter from my audience, Mainly when it came to anytime the letters are read out lout. Us brits have a distinct way of pronouncing swear words that Non-Brits especially find hilarious, this is true from actors like Roger Allam in The Thick of It whose enunciation of the F word is some of the best comedic acting I have ever seen. The one's who come out the best in these scenes (or indeed any scene) is Timothy Spall whose uppityness provides a perfect comedic contrast to when he looses his marbles and starts reading the letters out loud for everyone to hear. The latter of this is Jessie Buckley, whose character already had little to no filter whatsoever. Her performance provides the right balance between funny and serious that the movie is obviously going for, it's something Buckley doesn't have a lack of experience of. I don't think anyone could have captured this character and her way of being any better.

I must admit though this aspect of the film is something I wasn't as interested in as opposed to the the true crime part of it. Considering when there are some moments where you are not exactly sure if you are supposed to be laughing or taking seriously. Edward's abusive and ham-fisted misogyny feels like it's being played for laughs, much like any scene involving the police and how they mistreat or underestimate their female colleague until the scene takes a dark tone and then you realise that this is not something that the film wants to joke about anymore. As a result the movie doesn't fully succeed in managing to have the best of both as both the comedic and serious elements often feel like they are working against each other instead of complementing them.

All in all though, Wicked Little Letters is a fun and breezy time that doesn't outstay it's welcome, with a solid cast and a compelling plot point at it's centre, this on top of all of the crass language throughout certainly puts it above your average twee, British period piece. However It barley gets by on a handful of laughs and I can't speak to how accurate it is to the events that took place roughly 100 years ago but regardless it's something I will certainly will look into and will certainly be putting in my catalogue of "Most bizarre true crime cases throughout history" This for sure is a nice contrast compared to something like "Killers of the Flower Moon" for example.

Wicked Little Letters is Out in UK Cinemas now