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Review: Wicked Little Letters           6 /10  Stars                       

by Simon McCarthy

I was sitting in the almost empty cinema, stretching out near the front, near the place where the wheelchairs go. I was watching Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. The plot is simple; the residents of a small seaside town in the south of England start receiving disgusting anonymous letters, and then the police get involved. The story is based on real events and is set in the 1920s. The recipe for the film is 2 cups of Charles Dickens, 1 cup of Carry on Up the Khyber, and 1 tablespoon of Hot Fuzz. Cook in a large cauldron and stir frequently.

 After the film had been underway for about five minutes, a very elderly couple was wheeled in by their carers and parked nearby. When I glanced over to look at them they didn’t seem very interested in the film, that was until a particularly forceful “Fuck 'em up the arse” issued from the screen. This not only got their attention but seemed to amuse them no end. It would, I guess, have marked a significant departure from the usual Tuesday morning bingo and balloon batting session.

Jessie Buckley plays Rose Gooding, the foul mouthed Irish neighbour and Colman’s nemesis. Unlike Olivia Colman’s character, she is a native vulgar speaker. Each skilfully chosen word slips as easily from her lips as pouring buttermilk from a small beaker, to a large bowl on a summer’s morning in the County Clare as a gentle, damping mist cloaks the withers of a forlorn young donkey. Gooding lays to rest that genteel notion that swearing is best reserved for very occasional emphasis but is not to be used as a form of punctuation.

In contrast, Colman’s character thrills and surprises herself as she rides her own gushing torrent of foul invective, intoxicated by the utter, uninhibited freedom of the moment. The foul words bursting out of her like a long overdue shit, her mercurial facial expressions respond in sheer delight to the words she hears herself say, as if channelling some ancient god of filth.

Perhaps Colman’s character learnt the disruptive power of swearing from her two deceased soldier brothers, this would have added a nice touch to the plot. To quote Melissa Mohr from her 2013 book Holy Sh*t, a brief history of swearing. “Behind the anxiety about swearing lies a fear that civilisation is a thin veneer, barely covering a state of chaos.”

The men in the film are mostly portrayed as stupid bullying chauvinists, and this was, I think, close to the default setting for men in the day. But it was not only women who were being oppressed then. In 1920  Britain was at the height of its imperial power and was lording it over a quarter of the world’s population. This led to a lot of ordinary English people thinking they were something rather special, like Brexit but set in the olden days. Enter the family patriarch played by Timothy Spall and a nastier piece of work would be hard to conceive; his repressive belligerent presence stokes the furnace of Colman’s repressed rage and turns their humble home into a lead lined joyless coffin. Spall is unusual, often playing as a “character actor,” which is defined as “an actor known for playing unusual, eccentric, or interesting characters in supporting roles, rather than leading ones”. He did, however, win best actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his lead role in Mr. Turner, but then again he didn’t have any trouble bringing the large amount of eccentricity that the part required.

The very talented Anjana Vasan ( Killing Eve) is police officer Gladys Moss, who has some success investigating the case of the letters despite her superior sparing no effort to derail her work. In frustration she co-opts the help of a group of local women, including the artful Joana Scanlon (Puppy Love, Getting On), who plays a dim lady who keeps pigs and brooks nothing she thinks shouldn’t be brooked.  

Something interesting is going on in this film, in those days, just like today, people were perfectly capable of being racist as well as sexist, but not so in the film. Rose’s live in black partner is not once commented on. The judge in the court scene is black, whereas it wasn’t until 1978, over five decades later, that the first black judge was appointed in England. Anjana Vasan maybe cops a racial slur, but it is so bound up in a deluge of sexist put-downs that it is hard to isolate. Colour blind casting ? I guess, useful in this film, I'm not so sure. 

With its tricks, twists and turns the story  could have been one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, except not, because, in his time, body parts and their uses were not found as distasteful in conversation or correspondence as they are these days. What bothered people then was blasphemy. As the all pervasive and profane internet conditions us to acceptance of language that would have surprised or shocked us just a few years ago, it is now racism that has apparently become the dominant taboo. I don’t know about this, I still think there is plenty of shock potential left in the carnal and corporeal, but what the f*ck would I know.

 Postscript

For all those who were wondering, the police caution used at the end of the film is surprisingly historically correct, these came into use after the publication of the 1882 Police Code (second edition). 

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