WICKED LITTLE LETTERS– 4 STARS

LESSON #1: THE EXCITEMENT OF A GOOD CURSE WORD– From the prudish who don’t cuss to the proficient who do, there’s something unmistakably invigorating about dropped profanity. From appalling shock to steam-releasing relief, there’s a variety of reactions to hearing it and plenty more for saying it as well. All of those possible responses, be them positive or negative, grab your attention. Wicked Little Letters uses profanity at its finest while being taken at its worst.

Based on the true “Littlehampton Letters” and “Seaside Mystery” scandal from the early 1920s, Wicked Letter Letters surrounds the investigation behind hate mail delivered to Edith Swan, played by The Favourite Academy Award winner Olivia Colman. She’s an unmarried spinster north of 40 still living with her parents Edward and Victoria (a scowling Timothy Spall and a frazzled Gemma Jones). The letters contain more than the usual schoolyard-level of negative insults. They are dripping with scathing epithets chock full of all the best four-letter words in many forms and combinations.

By the beginning of the film, Edith has received her 19th such letter, and the collective gasps of the characters to even read the words still shatter sensibilities. At this point, her parents are fed up with the lack of police resolution and point their fingers at Swans’ next door neighbor Rose Gooding, played by Jessie Buckley of Wild Rose and I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Rose is a brusque, poor Irish single mother who has no qualms telling it like it is with the potty-est of potty mouths. 

LESSON #2: THE IRISH BROGUE PRONUNCIATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, PARTICULARLY THE SWEAR WORDS, IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST-- Allow me a moment to bring back this old life lesson from the extraordinary 2015 romantic drama Brooklyn and one that could have easily been thickly applied to The Banshees of Inisherin a year ago. The Irish pronunciation of swear words might be the unquestioned best in the world. It’s special because many can’t pull it off with complete genuineness (I’m looking at you, The Departed). Jessie Buckley glows with a loquaciousness where her line delivery is hilarious and her matching, flippant body language to put an extra oomph of attitude to swearing is hysterical.

Flashbacks in Wicked Little Letters show that Rose and Edith used to be closer friends, but favor has faded and now Rose’s prickly public persona screams culpability. She is arrested on suspicion of abuse and sent to prison after not being able to afford bail. Edith basks in notoriety and community sympathy. Only one cop, the buried and belittled female police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan of Killing Eve) from a misogynistic workplace looks past Rose, believes more chicanery exists in the case past what everyone else takes as cut and dry, and recruits some investigatory help.

LESSON #3: WOMEN LONGING TO BE SEEN AND HEARD– There’s an underlying vehemence in this scandal that the colorful language being bandied about– and multiplied to more recipients than Edith when Rose returns from the clink– is masking someone’s cry for attention. The sentiment and pattern of the letters morphs from targeted malice to liberated venting, and begins to float as both. And, it’s all likely coming from marginalized female citizens who never have the stump or permissive opportunity to speak their mind or exorcize their frustrations in an honest way, let alone a shamelessly crude one. Wicked Little Letters develops enough expressive clout with its mystery to be more about the voices being found than the rumors being circulated. 

Written by TV writer/actor Jonny Sweet in his first feature film screenplay and directed by Me Before You’s Thea Sharrock, Wicked Little Letters stands as a performance showcase for Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman. The film simmers any time the two of them deliver their dialogue. In a sneakily stylish move for mood, the bouncy score from composer Isobel Waller-Bridge (The Lesson) also hangs on their every word, so much so that the underscore starts and stops to pause for the necessary effect of the zingers before scripted scenes go back to their physical movements. Much like the reactive public of Littlehampton, viewers of Wicked Little Letters may find themselves having to choose a side between Colman or Buckley. There’s no need for that whatsoever. The movie wins with either one of them.