Wicked Little Letters: sweary comedy that 'could have been a gem'

"Just over 100 years ago, the genteel Sussex town of Littlehampton was rocked to its core" by a barrage of "obscene letters sent anonymously to respectable townsfolk", said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. "You're a sad, stinky bitch," declared one. "You stink of common shit," claimed another. A culprit was arrested and a trial ensued, followed with delight by a nation still reeling from the Great War.

"Wicked Little Letters", starring Olivia Colman as Edith, a "church-going spinster who still lives with her overbearing father (Timothy Spall) and pious mother (Gemma Jones)", exhumes this "little-remembered scandal". When she begins receiving the letters, Edith soon blames her neighbour Rose (Jessie Buckley), a "fiery" single mother from Ireland. But did Rose write them?

"With a cleverer, wittier script", the film "could have been a gem"; instead it "glides complacently and wastefully over all the social nuances that a better picture might have addressed", and wastes its top-notch cast. "It doesn't take an Einstein" to figure out where "Wicked Little Letters" is heading, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times – "it's obvious almost from the first frame".

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Nonetheless, there is much to enjoy in this "broad, gutsy comedy". Buckley is clearly having "a blast"; and Colman is a delight as a "God-fearing stick-in-the-mud" who eventually becomes so "giddily liberated", she seems "touched by divine spark". The film is "very funny" at first, said Dulcie Pearce in The Sun. "But as the minutes roll on and the tsunami of profanities continues, the laughter turns to a titter. Which then turns to silence." Still, "if you like swearing, then you will f**king love it".