Wicked Lit­tle Let­ters review – a flim­sy com­ic farce

This cof­fee table com­e­dy from direc­tor Thea Shar­rock and writer Jon­ny Sweet attempts to blow its view­ers’ minds with the rev­e­la­tion that it’s not just men who have pot­ty mouths. We’re down in the sleepy sea­side burg of Lit­tle­hamp­ton on the South­ern-Eng­lish coast dur­ing the ear­ly inter-war peri­od. The mousy yet pompous­ly-pious Edith (Olivia Col­man) receives a poi­son-pen let­ter in the mail, much to the ire of her pearl-clutch­ing par­ents (Tim­o­thy Spall and Gem­ma Jones). And it’s not the first.

The note con­tains reams of sex­u­al­ly-sug­ges­tive invec­tive, all deliv­ered in a strange­ly eccen­tric style. But who could be send­ing these mal­odor­ous mis­sives and caus­ing the peren­ni­al­ly-sin­gle Edith all kinds of emo­tion­al strain, and whose life has, we dis­cov­er, been a beset by an end­less series of upsets and mis­for­tunes? It’s most like­ly the shit-kick­ing, hooch-down­ing Irish good-time gal who lives next door, Jesse Buckley’s Rose Goodling. What­ev­er the truth, she’d be very easy to pin this crime on until the real cul­prit turns up.

Wicked Lit­tle Let­ters is the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of the cosy mys­tery in lit­er­a­ture: it cleaves to a tried-and-test­ed who­dunit struc­ture; divides the char­ac­ters up into obvi­ous good­ies and bad­dies; and plays things out with the min­i­mum of sur­prise and inno­va­tion. To cap things off, Anjana Vasan’s Lady Police Offi­cer Gladys Moss takes on the case, even though the men at her con­stab­u­lary see it as being above her pay grade. Swear­ing aside, it’s all extreme­ly nice.

What’s sad about the film is that the feath­er-light com­ic tone seems to pre­clude any deep­er insight into what are, on paper, a set of poten­tial­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly deep char­ac­ters. Each one is giv­en their sim­ple demon to slay, and the film goes no fur­ther in try­ing to open things up fur­ther and pick up on some deli­cious ambi­gu­i­ties that are ripe for the pick­ing. Edith in par­tic­u­lar is woe­ful­ly underdeveloped.

And we know that humour is a pure­ly objec­tive thing, but for this view­er there is a seri­ous dearth of deep, res­o­nant laughs. The naughty-naughty rude-rude puerile humour gets tired very quick­ly, and sea­soned com­ic tal­ents such as Col­man and Vasan just aren’t giv­en the mate­r­i­al to work with. The film’s third act attempts to place this piece of intrigu­ing his­tor­i­cal flot­sam into the wider con­text of British society’s inher­ent­ly misog­y­nis­tic stric­tures, but it’s too lit­tle too late.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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