WICKED LITTLE LETTERS is one of those truth-stranger-than-fiction tales that remind us that people are weirder than we might think. Director Thea Sharrock opens her comedy/mystery tale with text informing us “more of this is true than you might think,” a comic mystery about on the sudden appearance of anonymous obscene letters sent to various residents of a quiet of early 1920s little British seaside town. The first victim is Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), prim and proper religious spinster who still lives with her parents, and who embodies the last-gasp of the Victorian era ideal of a quiet obedient woman against those uppity women demanding the vote. Suspicion quickly falls on Edith’s neighbor, a foul-mouthed new arrival from Ireland, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), who has a daughter Nancy (Alisha Weir), and a live-in Black boyfriend Bill (Malachi Kirby), but who also frequents pubs, listens to jazz, and pretty much does and says what she likes.
While the male police force are only to happy to assume the foul-mouthed Irishwoman is behind the letters, the one woman on the police force,Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan), is more suspicious. For one thing, the letters using more educated language than one might expect from the plain-spoken Rose, and the fancy handwriting seems not to fit either. However, Moss’ doubts are dismissed by the sexist, dim-witted male police, and she is told to stick to her assigned duties, providing emotional support for female crime victims or witnesses.
WICKED LITTLE LETTERS is a comic romp in a 1920s little village where part of the fun is in its true-story basis and the early feminist tables-turning. We actually do hear several of the “wicked little letters” read aloud, and they are funny, quirky, and surprisingly more obscene little personal insults than you might expect, and of a nature we won’t repeat here. They get a laugh, at least the first few times we hear them, which is often enough to get a bit repetitive.
The biggest delight are Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, who are deliciously funny in all their scenes together. Colman and Buckley play off each other brilliantly whenever these two characters encounter each other. Despite what you expect, the characters actually kind of like each other, and even started out as friends, when the lonely, religious Edith decides to befriend her new neighbor Rose, thinking to bring her into her church circle, but instead discovers the strong-willed Rose’s capacity for salty language and humor.
The cast is filled with other gems, including Emma Jones as Edith’s devout, meek and kindly mother, and her more overbearing, bullying father, played by Timothy Spall in a rare more negative role. Edith’s father rails against the suffragettes fight for the vote as if it is a personal insult to manhood and demands complete obedience from his daughter. Among the women joining the police officer in her investigation are a trio of the over-looked and off-beat, Mabel (Eileen Atkins), Kate (Lolly Adefope) and Ann (Joanna Scanlan).
The comedy is broad, all the men are dumb and all the women are smart, but it is a lot of fun to watch, especially any time Colman and Buckley share the screen. Anjana Vasan as “Woman Police Officer Moss” as she is always called, is good too, a real expert at eye-rolling, and the rest of the cast add their bits too. Solving the mystery is less the problem than gathering the proof, which the script by British writer/comedian Jonny Sweet milks for humorous switches and near-misses.
WICKED LITTLE LETTERS is just a romp of a comedy, based on a true story set in a time when gender roles were bending and new possibilities opening, and featuring hilarious performances, especially from Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in hilarious verbal sparring matches.
WICKED LITTLE LETTERS opens Friday, Apr. 5, in theaters.
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
