Wicked Little Letters

Wicked Little Letters

A 1920s English seaside town bears witness to a dark and absurd scandal in this riotous mystery comedy. Based on a stranger than fiction true story, the film follows two neighbours: deeply conservative local Edith Swan and rowdy Irish migrant Rose Gooding. When Edith and fellow residents begin to receive wicked letters full of unintentionally hilarious profanities, foul-mouthed Rose is charged with the crime. The anonymous letters prompt a national uproar, and a trial ensues. However, as the town’s women - led by Police Officer Gladys Moss - begin to investigate the crime themselves, they suspect that something is amiss, and Rose may not be the culprit after all.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 101 minutes
  • Genre: Comedy, Drama
  • Stars: Jessie Buckley, Olivia Colman, Anjana Vasan, Timothy Spall, Joanna Scanlan, Malachi Kirby, Lolly Adefope, Eileen Atkins, Alisha Weir, Gemma Jones, Hugh Skinner, Grant Crookes, Paul Chahidi, Jonny Sweet, Tim Key, Jason Watkins, Cyril Nri, Richard Goulding, Tim McMullan
  • Director: Thea Sharrock
 Comments
  • wheatley-20230 - 27 June 2024
    Worth going to see Olivia Colman enjoying herself so much!
    Olivia Colman is always worth watching and she does not disappoint here. She appears to be having great fun in a part offering such contrasting behaviours. Jessie Buckley and Timothy Spall are also great.

    In some ways this is a typically British film: tremendous acting squeezed into a little film about a forgotten incident a century ago. It's lovingly done but you do sometimes ask yourself whether there wasn't a bigger story that would showcase these talents more effectively.

    It took me a while to tune in to the comedy, perhaps because of the incessant swearing. I hate gratuitous swearing, but it seemed less offensive than it might have been, perhaps because it is central to the story line and so not actually gratuitous, but also because it is delivered with a kind of innocence.

    Worth going to see Olivia Colman enjoying herself so much!
  • Goloh - 26 May 2024
    Glad I didn't live next door
    To the reviewers who complain about people like me who didn't think this was a comedy: tough #$%^&! It's a dark (in mood and indoor photography) representation of what was apparently a real situation a century ago. I'll grant that some amusing scenes were planted in there, maybe to keep viewers from fleeing the most concentrated torrent of "language" I've seen in any film in a long time.

    Having got that off my mind, acting from key players was excellent, and though the plot and resolution were too predictable, I stuck with it -- mostly to hear how much further those letters could stretch everyone's vocabulary. I didn't really like this film, but appreciated that they all had the nerve to make it.
  • edie_22032024 - 4 May 2024
    Untitled
    By the time I was proceeding this film, I had kept my mouth spreading from ear to ear for entire 100 minutes, and my belly hurt too. It is that cathartically funny.

    It's a period comedy drama set in 1920s England, right after the World War one.

    Olivia Colman's character is a middle aged self-hating intellectual spinster, well-educated and presumably in late Victoria period of England.

    Jessie Buckley's character is an Irish young single mother.

    Both characters loved profanity as somehow a weapon or coping mechanism, and without dumping spoiler alert, i will just say the most significant difference in between the two women characters who weaponised vulgarity by using certain language, is that one is sticking that on the surface, the other is painfully penning that underneath. After saw or watched the film, you will find out which one is what.

    The film was shot at west Sussex England, on set the house built from Victorian era brick horse stable barn alteration looked mesmerising to me.

    Most of the other cast crew besides the two I mentioned earlier , all have very strong background of stage play portfolio, if you are a frequent viewer of English stage plays as I am, you would enjoy it as a feast, as they are all here for the production. Throw a name or two some people may not be very familiar with as I am, I loved Anjana Vasan since watched her version of Hermia in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hugh Skinner just had been all over the place in royal Shakespeare company's plays.

    I won't be surprised one day this film becomes a source of a stage play adapted by it. It is delightfully original indeed.

    7.9/10.