Wicked Little Letters, a story that takes place in 1920s England, is very much a topical story to me. While many things aren’t the same a hundred years apart, this story is about a person who attacks their community by saying terrible things to them through an alias to escape consequences and free themselves from whatever was holding them back from saying what they really feel. Sounds like social media, doesn’t it? This film, directed by Thea Sharrock and written by Jonny Sweet, is based on a real scandal in Littlehampton; it follows Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) and Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), two women who are neighbors. After Edith receives 19 anonymous letters filled with crude language and insults, Rose is blamed and jailed because the letters read like how she speaks to the townspeople (or how they feel). Edith and Rose started as friends, but after at Edith’s father Edward’s (Timothy Spall) birthday party in which he insults Rose and Rose doesn’t take it and curses him out in front of everyone, they are no longer friends. The film then ends up being a whodunit when Police Constable Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) believes Rose didn’t do it and goes against her superiors and aligns with Rose’s family to figure out who is actually writing these letters and sending them all over town.
The key to this film is the dynamic between Rose and Edith; with Edith being older but living with her parents and trying to live by her father’s wishes for how to live and be a lady, which constricts Edith. Edith is not married and, in a way, is jailed because of her father’s opinion and stature within the town. The first time she sees Rose and her Irish brashness and unwillingness to just be walked over by the men in this town, it’s enticing to her. She instantly looks up to her, but then that fandom turns to hate and envy. This dynamic of these two is the core of the whole film and what really kept me interested. Rose is such a rebel in this place. She’s a single mother; she talks the way she talks and doesn’t bow to anyone there, and she has a Black boyfriend, which doesn’t make a big deal of it, but it clearly means something as they are clearly different than everyone else. Coleman is, like usual, excellent and does so much with the little things happening with her face. A lot is going on with Edith, just through tiny changes you can see in the close-ups. Buckley also does great as Rose, who’s going through a lot just for being different from these judgemental English folks in this town.
The real hero in this film is Gladys Moss, and the performance by Vasan is fantastic. While she’s not like an Agatha Christie detective following trials, being a detective to figure out these inconsistencies and the patriarchy of her co-workers and their refusal to take her seriously make her someone to really root for. There’s the right tinge of quirkiness in her performance on screen that, for me, if the beginning is a bit slow, will drag you back into the story quickly. I’ll be honest: this film does feel a bit like an extended episode of a BBC show, and while that is not a bad thing, it does mean that watching this at home doesn’t feel like a loss of scale. It’s shot in a way that feels right on the television screen. Wicked Little Letters is a simple yet surprisingly complex mystery that will surprise many viewers with just how much they’ll like this film. As I said earlier, it is something that feels old and ends up feeling more relevant to modern life than many bigger-budget films taking place in the current day.
Score: B+
