Describing Wicked Little Letters as a throwback feels odd.  I remember when British Period Comedies would regularly appear in theaters and be seen by what would politely describe as “senior audiences” in significant numbers.  The Full Monty was a Best Picture nominee back in 1997.  (Has it already been twenty-five years since it came out?)  Helen Mirren and Judy Dench once defined this genre, but haven’t been in anything like it in years.  Many things have conspired against this once dependable genre: COVID, streaming and changing audience tastes being primary among them.  Throwback or not, the movie is incredibly funny and will delight audiences who seek it out, either in theaters or on streaming.

The plot of Wicked is reminiscent of Chocolat in many ways.  As with that 2000 Best Picture nominee, a free-spirited young lady with a daughter in two arrives at a quaint seaside town and causes a ruckus.  Whereas Juliette Binoche’s Vianne upset the established order through her skills as a chocolatier, young mum (and Irish) Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) achieves the same through her proclivity for swearing and carousing.  Almost every thing she says includes an F-bomb (or three) for emphasis.  Much to the chagrin of her religious neighbors, Rose likes to drink, swear and have fun at the local pub.  While her lifestyle may be on the rowdy side, she loves and takes good care of her daughter, Nancy (Alisha Weir).  But you just know that the stuck-up English types living next door will have a problem with her eventually.

At first, Rose and her neighbor Edith Swan (Olivia Colman, sparkling as always) get along well enough.  Edith is middle-aged but still lives at home with her Dad Edward (a downright nasty Timothy Spall) and Mum Victoria (Gemma Jones, perfectly pearl-clutching).  Edith’s parents are the definition of prigs, and don’t want anything to do with Rose and chastise Edith for befriending her.  One day, an anonymous tip sends Child Protective Services to Rose’s house, and she’s none too pleased.  She believes Edith called them because of a tiff during Edward’s birthday party, but Edith says she wasn’t behind it.  Rose doesn’t believe her and stops talking to her, which leads to the arrival of the wicked little letters in question.

The letters are profanity-laden tirades directed towards the recipient.  They consist primarily of insults, ridiculing everything from the recipients physical appearance to their overall comportment.  Think “You’re an incredibly ugly and stupid person who nobody in their right mind would ever have sex with,” delivered with an impressive number of expletives.  Almost everyone receives the letters, including Edith.  And because everyone is familiar with Rose’s way of expressing herself, they all suspect she’s the author of the letters.  Rose scoffs at the accusation, because “Why would I send a letter when I can just say it?”  Combined with the fact that Rose rarely has two coins to rub together, the notion that she’d be sending missives all over town doesn’t make sense.  However, that doesn’t stop Edward from enlisting the local (male) police officers to arrest her for sending the letters.

Fortunately, Woman Police Officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) doesn’t believe Rose is guilty and investigates further, to the ire of her commanding officer.  She enlists the help of a group of whist players who, with the help of some novel investigative techniques, uncover the actual culprit.  I won’t reveal who the guilty party is here, but I will say that it makes perfect sense, given how repressed that person has been.  As we know from Chocolat, you can try to repress your natural tendencies, but they will eventually burst forth like a pent-up dam.

Wicked Little Letters presents itself as a fun, bawdy comedy with mystery at its center, but it’s more than that.  It’s about a group of women who struggle with–and eventually triumph over–a familiar foe, the patriarchy.  The men in this male-dominated society fully expect the women to be religious, docile or preferable both.  Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), however, insists on living her life as she sees fit, thank you very much.  Unfortunately, the men in town are determined to quash Rose’s wild behavior before it lights a spark within the other women.  Heaven forbid they would ask the men in their lives to clean out the loo once in a while!

Accordingly, the movie uses Rose’s struggle to symbolize the choice between conformity and  individual liberty.  To its credit, the movie doesn’t make Rose’s choice a simple one.  Rose faces no end of trouble for her adversarial behavior and carefree lifestyle, including the very real threat of prison time and the loss of her daughter.  However, she knows that a life spent in willful acquiesce to all societal norms, as is the case with her neighbor Edith (Olivia Colman), is not a life she wants.  Even though Rose would be “free” if she were pious and respectful, she would be in constant fear of recriminations if she ever stepped out of line.  The most viable path forward is represented by Officer Gladys, who carefully works within the system to bring about positive change.  

Wicked Little Letters also reminds us that the best choice we can make with our lives is the most obvious one, namely to allow ourselves to enjoy it.  Similar to Chocolat, the movie’s underlying theme is that a life dedicated to repressing the soul is not a life well-lived.  Instead, as Rose exemplifies through her effusive cursing, we should allow ourselves to have fun (within reason, of course.)  Whether it’s chocolate, cursing or something else, when we treat ourselves we get to experience joy, one of the best things life has to offer.  Recommended.

Analysis

The Broads

Aside from the story, the appeal of seeing Wicked Little Letters is getting to see two of the best actresses working today at the top of their game.  First there’s Olivia Colman, who I first became acquainted with through two television series, The Night Manager and Broadchurch.  She’s had quite a run since then, winning an Academy Award for The Favourite and an Emmy for her portrayal of The Queen in The Crown.  She’s also been exceptional in Fleabag, The Lost Daughter, The Father and Wonka.  In terms of her performances, I would consider Dame Judy Dench as her closest progenitor.  Like Dench, Colman constructs her performance internally and lets it emerge through facial expressions and vocal modulations.  She communicates so much from a glance or from one of her big, toothy smiles that I’m convinced she would have been a star in the silent film era.  Thinking outside the box, Colman also reminds me of Jack Nicholson, in how they both relay a wealth of information about their characters’ interior lives through the way they observe the world around them and speak to others.  When I described Colman as “sparkling”, this is what I meant.  She’s masterful at being able to radiate energy in the subtlest ways in all of her performances.

In comparison, Jesse Buckley is more of a physical actress.  I don’t mean to say that she can’t deliver an intimate and emotional performance, because she certainly can.  She first caught my eye in HBO’s Chernobyl, and she was exceptional in Women Talking.  I even thought she did nice work in Men, the ridiculously crude attempt at naval gazing by writer-director Alex Garland.  The main difference between Buckley and Colman is how they construct their performances.  Colman begins from within and projects outward, whereas Buckley uses her body to draw us in.  For example, when Buckley’s Rose swears, it comes out as naturally as the way she walks and breathes.  Her body accentuates each curse word through her physical movements.  For Rose, swearing is like flexing a muscle, whereas for Edith it’s entirely mental in origin.

So while Wicked Little Letters is definitely well-made and very funny, the best part for me was watching Colman and Buckley, two actresses with completely different acting styles, play off each other.  It reminded me of Scandal in how Dench and Cate Blanchett, both highly regarded  actresses at the time, delivered some of their best work opposite each other.  Like those two, Colman and Buckley are on different wavelengths, like AC and DC currents.  And also like Dench and Blanchett, they make for an incredibly memorable pairing.

A cursing we will go

So this is what cursing sounds like.

That’s what came to mind while listening to Jamie Buckley casually toss out f-bomb after f-bomb, followed by Olivia Colman hacking out a hearty gobs of expletives from the bottom of her deeply repressed soul.  Swearing in movies is fun!  Why didn’t anyone tell me?

I’m joking of course.  I grew up on films from the Seventies and early Eighties, before the PG-13 rating ever existed.  Movies like Goodfellas and Basic Instinct couldn’t fit in enough curse words.  Lately I’ve noticed how castrated PG-13 movies are.  Some feature countless gun fights, stabbings and what have you, and you never see a drop of blood.  Characters who have serious chemistry may kiss once.  Swearing, the cause celebre of Wicked Little Letters, is often reduced to single word in a solitary scene.  

To this I say, bollocks!  Listening to characters curse is fun!  Take for example The King’s Speech, a movie people criticized for not being worthy of winning Best Picture.  It included a scene where the King learns that he doesn’t stutter when he curses.  It’s a funny scene, but earned the movie an R.  That movie came out in 2010, but if it came out today, that scene probably would have been cut out to ensure a PG-13 rating.  That would have been a shame, because listening to Colin Firth swear as a Royal was priceless.

To be fair, the PG-13 rating may have made some movies more profitable than they would have been if they were released with PG or R.  Even with that in mind, obtaining the PG-13 requires serious artistic trade-offs.  In addition to only being allowed to include nudity in a non-sexual context and violence that is almost entirely bloodless, PG-13 films can only include one F-bomb.  They can include a handful of other curse words, a sh*ts and maybe an a**h*le or two, but only one F-bomb.  For example, The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was notable for being the first Marvel MCU movie to include an F-bomb.  I’m not complaining, because superhero movies could stand to be a bit more adult.  But that movie’s achievement pales in comparison to what goes on in Wicked Little Letters.

Wicked Little Letters is not only a throwback movie because of its genre (the British Period Comedy), but also in how it indulges its characters in swearing freely.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out one day that the movie featured over one hundred or even two hundred curse words.  When I said how much fun it was to hear Rose and Edith swear, I’m being honest.  No offense to my fellow Americans, but there’s something magical about hearing Irish and British people swear.  Is it a matter of emphasis?  Word choice?  I can’t settle on a specific reason why, but those across the pond from the US simply do it better.  If you don’t believe me, see this movie and remember when characters cursed with abandon.  And maybe you’ll be inspired to take up serious cursing as a hobby.  Nothing alleviates stress like a few choice curse words.  Just be sure to turn off the microphone on your Zoom call beforehand.

Remember When

‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation.

Tony Soprano

The above quote is a notable line of dialog from The Sopranos.  I mention it here because watching Wicked Little Letters reminded me of how much the British Period Comedy genre has fallen out of favor over the last decade.  There was a time when audiences would see movies like The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Hundred-Foot Journey in decent numbers.  Nowadays, movies like Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Mr. Malcolm’s List and Chevalier make a fraction of those movies.  They come and go without making a ripple on the moviegoing public, even though they are recognized as being entertaining.

There are likely many reasons for this trend.  The global pandemic and the rise in streaming has changed the viewing habits of the older moviegoer demographic. Instead of going out and catching a virus, seniors have opted to stay home and wait for these movies to appear on various streaming services.  (This would explain how the second Downton Abbey movie made less than half as much as the first one.  The first came out in 2019, the second in 2022.)  Distributors have encouraged the transition from theatrical to home viewing by only letting these movies play in theaters for a matter of weeks before they are available on either SVOD or VOD.  In this scenario, there’s almost no chance for movies like Wicked Little Letters to catch on with audiences and build word of mouth.  Outside of the faithful who still go to the movies out of habit will watch these in modest numbers while they are in theaters, the rest are fine with waiting for them to appear in short order on Max, Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Wicked Little Letters is a fun, bawdy comedy that deserved to be seen with an audience.  If this movie had come out ten years before, it would have played before decent-sized audiences who laughed together at the movie’s broad comedy.  Instead, my wife and I watched it in a small theater with eight other people.  The movie is definitely a crowd pleaser and it’s a shame that most people don’t even know it exists.  It was produced by Sony Pictures Classics, and since Sony has a streaming partnership with Netflix, people may eventually discover it there.  Like those British Period Comedies of yesteryear, it’s well made, well acted and very funny.  The movie features some of the funniest profanity-laden dialog I’ve heard in a long time, delivered by two actresses at the top of their game.  By the time you read this, Wicked Little Letters will probably already be gone from theaters.  In that case, keep an eye out for it on streaming.  You won’t be disappointed, I promise.