Director: Thea Sharrock (UK, France). Year of Release: 2023
Littlehampton, West Sussex, the 1920s. The opening credits tell us that the story we are about to see is “more true than you’d think”. A woman in a nightdress, who look like she’s just woken up, throws a tin bath outside her front door. Shortly afterwards, her next-door neighbour, who is dressed much more conservatively, peers at the bath disapprovingly. She removes a bunch of hair, throws it into the street, and takes the bath into her own house.
Edith and Rose are neighbours. Edith is a God-fearing Christian, who still lives with her parents. Rose is an immigrant from Ireland, whose husband died in the First World War and now shares her house with her daughter and partner (to use the lingo of the time, let’s call him her “live-in lover”). Edith, who regularly quotes the Bible, is outraged by the sounds of sex that she has to hear on the other side of the wall of their terraced house and, in general, by Rose’s boozing and cursing.
When Edith starts to receive sweary letters, there is only one suspect. Edith is reluctant to press charges – “judge not, lest ye be judged” and all that – but her pushy father eggs her on. He gets more angry after Rose turns up at the pub where he’s celebrating his birthday and challenges the disdain he shows for his daughter and for women in general. After a particularly public dispute with Edith, social services appear on the doorstep asking about the well-being of Rose’s kid.
The dispute escalates, largely because of the arrogant uselessness of the local police, who insist that, even though the letters are clearly not written in Ruth’s handwriting, a calligraphy test is inadmissible. Rose asks, not unreasonably, why on earth she would write down words which he quite happily and loudly uses in public. But she is charged, and – unable to raise the bail money – separated from her beloved daughter and sent to Southampton prison awaiting trial.
One person believes in Ruth. Woman police officer Gladys Moss (as she always feels compelled to introduce herself) is lowest down in the police hierarchy, and seen by the male officers as merely there to make them tea. But, allying herself with various “colourful” characters from the women’s Whist team (yes, it’s a film with that sort of tweeness), Moss first raises the bail money needed to free Ruth, then defies orders to try and prove her innocence.
There are two ways of looking at Wicked Little Letters. On the one hand, you can just marvel at the cast list which features Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, and Timothy Spall. This is the peak of British acting talent at the top of their game. Some critics have intimated that the experience of watching national treasure Colman read out a string of expletives is worth the price of the cinema ticket on its own. And Anjana Vasan is just as good as she was in the superlative We are Lady Parts.
But then there’s the script, which is so bland and obvious that it would be rejected by the Vicar of Dibley for being too anodyne. Stereotypes do stereotypical things in a way that guarantees that we will never be very surprised. There is one exception. It’s hardly a plot spoiler to say that Edith really wrote the letters. This is signalled from very early on. But I spent most of the second half of the film really annoyed about the very obvious plot twist that the film was about to drop on us.
In court, Edith is asked to explain why the letters are written in a very peculiar script which only she seems to use. She concedes the point immediately, saying that this is how her father taught her to write. “The bastards”, I thought. “They’re going to ‘surprise’ us by showing that Edith didn’t write the letters after all. How stupid do they think we are?” Well, even stupider than I’d given them credit for, apparently. This rather obvious potential plot twist isn’t mentioned again.
And don’t get me started on the colour blind casting, something which, if it’s done well, can enhance a films message. In Amando Iannucci’s excellent The Personal History of David Copperfield, casting Dev Patel as David emphasizes the point that although the story is set in a specific time and place, it addresses many universal experiences and dilemmas which are not just experienced by white people in Dickensian England.
But the experiences and dilemmas experienced here are far from universal. Edith is completely under the thumb of her domineering father, the possibility of kids born out of wedlock is too shocking to consider, and Rose’s daughter Nancy is not even allowed to play the “unladylike” guitar.Sexism still exists today, of course it does, but its form has changed, and it should be clear that these specific forms of oppression are no longer prevalent.
So, how can this deeply traditional society tolerate an Asian policewoman and a black judge? There are more non-white faces in the Littlehampton of the film than there probably are today. The fact that Rose has a Black boyfriend is plausible as her whole life defies convention. But it is barely believable neither that so many non-white people would be living in such a conservative seaside town at this time, nor that they would not be confronted with vicious racist abuse.
Woman Police Officer Ross poses a particular problem. In the film, she is patronised for being a woman but experiences little explicit racism. She has a brown skinned niece. And yet her name is Gladys Ross. The end credits list the fates of the “real life” figures on whom the characters are based. We can only presume that the “real” Gladys Ross was not brown. This sort of colour blind casting doesn’t challenge racism, it wishes it away.
Wicked Little Letters is one of those unchallenging period dramas that “they don’t make any more”. Except they do. All the time. One review said that It will “join the ranks of The King’s Speech and Gosford Park.” That particular reviewer was referring to the excessive use of swearing in a period piece, but it could just have easily been talking about the unchallenging blandness which these films share.
These are the sort of British films which are loved by a certain sort of non-British cinemagoer because it portrays a Britain (or shall we say Southern England?) where people are too polite and always apologetic. It is a land where everyone is middle class, sexism is inconvenient, and racism and other forms of oppression don’t really exist. Even at the best of times, this sort of film has little to do with how life actually takes place, and we left the best of times a long time ago.
Wicked Little Letters has been accused of delivering a one-note script, but this is maybe giving it more praise than it is due. There is nothing here to engage or surprise, other than a series of excellent acting performances from top-notch actors doing their best to save a script which really should have been drowned at birth. I can’t even be bothered to ask why no-one asked the village postmistress who had bought a lot of stamps lately, because its just so difficult to care.
But, yes, the acting is superb. It is difficult not to feel a surge of joy watching Jessie Buckley in full flow, even though the writer (a comedian apparently) has done his best to rob the film of all joy and spontaneity by strictly taking orders from the Dummies Guide to British Period Drama. You are just left wondering what it was that attracted so many great actors to such an uninspiring script.
CinePhil 