'Wicked Little Letters' is a quirky British comedy about small-town scandal
Sean Burns
Starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, the film is based on a true story about a series of obscene missives that scandalized a small Sussex town in the early 1920s, critic Sean Burns reviews.
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A lesson I learned too late in life is that when you’re done venting your spleen in an angry email, it’s always best to hit the “DELETE” key instead of “SEND.” (Chances are the message was more about you blowing off steam than the matter at hand, anyway.) This bit of advice could have saved a whole lot of trouble for the anonymous scribe seen in “Wicked Little Letters,” a jaunty British import based on a true story about a series of obscene missives that scandalized a small Sussex town in the early 1920s. The movie is a pleasantly amusing trifle — one of those quirky English village comedies that used to play for months on end at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and West Newton Cinema back before the audience for this sort of thing started staying home and streaming television shows instead. Like most films that take place in the past, this one’s really more concerned with the present, and any resemblance to our blighted era of online harassment is obviously intentional.

Olivia Colman stars as Edith Swan, a pious spinster who’s been on the receiving end of some impressively filthy, unsigned letters as of late. The only unwed daughter still living at home with her casually oppressive parents (played with stiff upper lips by British national treasures Gemma Jones and Timothy Spall), Edith’s a well-meaning pill who lords over the local Christian Women’s Whist Club and has no idea that even her closest friends consider her kind of a bummer to be around. Edith takes the potty-mouthed messages in stride, a little too eager to assure everyone within earshot that enduring such suffering makes her more like Christ — who also suffered, you know? — while she’s celebrated in the local papers for her fine fortitude in the face of such unprintable insults. It seems the only thing capable of ruffling Edith’s firm feathers is her new next-door neighbor.

Jessie Buckley’s Rose Gooding is a handful, all right. One of those Irish immigrants that everyone in the town was worried about showing up in Sussex after the war, she’s a rowdy single mom who curses like a sailor and could probably outdrink an entire fleet. The widowed Rose’s crimes against propriety include having fun and enjoying her life — keeping her new neighbors up all night by having loud, acrobatic-sounding sex with her boyfriend (Malachi Kirby) and allowing her daughter (Alisha Weir) the unladylike hobby of playing the guitar. Just about every aspect of Rose’s existence is an affront to Edith’s belief system, so when the sweary mail starts showing up she’s the only logical suspect. The dunderheaded local constabulary agrees, save for a rookie cop (Anjana Vasan) who wonders why Rose would go to all the trouble of writing down expletives she has no problem saying to Edith’s face.

“Wicked Little Letters” isn’t much of a mystery. (My mom guessed the culprit right away.) But the movie wisely gets that revelation out of the way early on, with director Thea Sharrock focusing instead on the societal factors and suffocating decorum that breed scandals like this one. The real story of the “The Littlehampton Letters” is much meaner than the one told in the movie, which extends a sympathetic ear to pretty much everyone involved, save for Spall’s abusive patriarch. He’s here to embody the spirit-crushing, old world Christian order opposed to free spirits like Rose. (His performance is so scary it sometimes upends the picture’s amiable air, like he walked in from a Mike Leigh movie or something.) Sharrock and screenwriter Jonny Sweet aren’t interested so much in the rivalry between Edith and Rose as they are in establishing their common cause. It’s no coincidence that stories of suffragettes keep popping up in the papers next to breathless coverage of the dirty letters.

It's a kick to watch Colman and Buckley play off each other, the former coloring her outrage with increasing notes of envy and admiration as their feud wears on. The two actresses co-starred as the same character at different ages in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 2021 directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” — a terrific picture that, like most movies made for Netflix, seems to have been swallowed by the algorithm instead of getting the attention it deserved — so it’s fun to watch them finally work face to face. I’ve been saying since “Wild Rose” played the Independent Film Festival Boston back in 2019 that Buckley’s a superstar waiting to happen. She makes you wish Hollywood was still writing Julia Roberts roles, because she’d knock one out of the park. Her Rose isn’t a particularly well-drawn character beyond “profane life force,” but Buckley wins your heart even before she starts mooning the cops.

One should never underestimate the entertainment value of prim and proper old biddies saying swears. Edith and Rose have nothing in common save for trying to get along in a world run by exceedingly stupid men, a frustration that cries out for the catharsis of four-letter words. It’s the same plight suffered by Vasan’s Officer Moss, instructed by her superiors to introduce herself as “Woman Police Officer Moss.” The movie caters to contemporary sensibilities — were one feeling less generous, you might say it panders to them — complete with colorblind casting that curiously doesn’t raise any eyebrows in 1920s Sussex. Period verisimilitude is not exactly a strong suit here, yet “Wicked Little Letters” can’t help but resonate in the present day. Just scroll through your town’s Facebook community group sometime and see how much people still love writing nasty things about their neighbors.

“Wicked Little Letters” is now in theaters.