Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Poison Pen Pals: Review of Wicked Little Letters
★★★★☆
By Geoff Carter
If you take a mystery, wrap it in a comedy, sprinkle in some feminist trappings, and then top off with a pinch of clownish but mean-hearted patriarchal mulishness, you end up with the wonderfully amusing but deceptively intricate film Wicked Little Letters.
Based on a true story, the film recounts the investigation of a series of obscene anonymous letters sent to Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), a spinster and upright religious resident of Littlehampton, England who lives with her domineering father Edward (Timothy Spall) and her browbeaten mother Victoria (Gemma Jones). Edith’s next-door neighbor, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) is a foul-mouthed and rambunctious but good-hearted Irish immigrant, and single mother, who is suspected of writing the letters. The two women had initially been friends, but after a spat during which Rose hit one of Edward’s friends, the friendship cooled, and the letters began arriving at Edith’s door. When child protective services arrive to investigate the welfare of Rose’s daughter Nancy (Alisha Weir), Rose suspects it is Edith who notified them.
During the opening sequence of the film, Edith and her parents are sitting around the table, deciding what to do about the nineteen hate letters she has received. Edward reads some of them aloud. While the letters are laced with obscenities, some of the phrasing and lexicon is—to say the least, odd. Edward demands that Edith file charges. They notify the local police, who promptly—and with no evidence except Edward’s accusations—arrest Rose, despite the misgivings of Woman Police Officer (her actual job title) Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan), who does not believe Rose is the culprit. She is shot down and formally reprimanded by her boss, Chief Constable Spedding (Paul Chahidi) and mocked by her colleague, Constable Pepperwick (Hugh Skinner). As a Woman Police Officer, Gladys is not even allowed to carry handcuffs but is deeply driven to police work because of her father, who died in the line of duty.
Edith is reluctant to testify against her neighbor and former friend but does so at her father’s urging, tempering her accusations and testimony with Christian aphorisms—most of them saccharine. Rose cannot afford to spring for the bail money and is remanded to custody. She leaves Nancy in the care of her boyfriend Bill (Malachi Kirby). In the meantime, some of the neighborhood women who are members of the Whist Club express doubts about Rose’s guilt after meeting her.
Ann (Joanna Scanlan) and Mabel (Eileen Atkins) like Rose and bail her out while Kate (Lolly Adefope) detests her and refuses to help. Rose goes to Gladys for help but is told the rules state that an investigating officer cannot help a suspect.
Once Rose is released, the letters pick back up again, targeting not only Edith, but others in the neighborhood as well. The press gets hold of the case, turning it into a national sensation. Edith receives another letter which is read by her mother Victoria, who dies from shock. Noticing similarities between Edith’s signature on the death certificate and the letters, Gladys begins to investigate her which results in Spedding suspending her from the force.
Rose’s trial is a sensationalized national affair, during the course of which it is revealed that Nancy’s is not the child of a dead war hero, but rather is an illegitimate child, which—in the eyes of this misogynistic society—is reason enough to find her guilty.
Appalled by the injustice, Gladys continues her investigation of Edith, enlisting the help of Mabel, Ann, and Kate, who reluctantly agrees to help. Together they hatch a plan which manages to trap the real culprit and prove Rose’s innocence.
While Wicked Little Letters delivers the engagement of a mystery and the entertainment of a comedy, it also provides thoughtful forays into the status of women in the stalwart and unforgiving man’s world of 1920s England during the time of a suffrage movement in the UK. Although Gladys is a gifted investigator, she is relegated to the role of Woman Police Office and is openly ridiculed by the male members of the force.
Edith is browbeaten and bullied by her father Edward, who still sends her to her room to write out scriptures as punishment for unladylike behavior even though she is a woman well into middle age. Victoria is quite and mousy, never second-guessing her husband.
Kate wears the postal uniform of her dead husband. Gladys wears her police uniform with pride, both paying tribute to the dead men in their lives, donning their mantles if you will. Edith, who has been intimidated her entire life by her heartless and demanding father, spouts only pleasantries and Christian aphorisms to the world, but nurses a deep and burning rage at her subjugation. She realizes after her mother has died that her father had actively discouraged Sidney, her most serious suitor.
Edith is the paragon of repression. Locked into the mold of the God-fearing, obedient little girl sentenced to lifelong servitude in father’s household, Edith’s rage is deflected away from its source and focused that which she cannot become: an independent woman like Rose Gooding.
Rose swears, drinks, carries on, and does not go to church. She says what she means and means what she says. She is good-hearted, a good mother, and has a steady boyfriend, but for that—and because of all that, she is a scandal.
When the other women come to her rescue, proving her innocence, they are in fact saving more than one woman. They are saving—literally freeing—the paragon of a woman who has been condemned not for indecent behavior, not for swearing, not for writing nasty letters, but for exercising her independence. Gladys, Ann, Kate, and Mabel recognize this injustice and come to her aid—which is in fact their own aid.
Balanced against this well-constructed thematic is a comedic sensibility that ranges from satire and caricature, tongue-in-cheek wordplay, and sheer slapstick. Strangely, instead of tempering or minimizing the impact of the social message, the comic elements underline it. Spedding and Pepperwick are so comically moronic, they shred any substance the male partiarchy might ever have had. Edward and his cronies are so idiotically cruel and merciless, they become caricatures of chauvinistic pigs.
The women, especially during the investigation scenes, are also presented in a somewhat comedic light. From Ann’s unabashed earthiness (literally) to Mabel’s stalwart outspokenness (especially when she tries out swearing) to Gladys’ stubborness, these characters become more archetypal that human. Jessie Buckley’s Rose is outrageous, and of course hilarious.
The acting in the film is outstanding. As Edith, Olivia Colman exudes a perfect mix of sweetness, frustration, and hope. Jessie Buckley hits the perfect tone with Rose, a role that could easily have gone miles over the top. No one plays an angry and self-righteous Englishman like Timothy Spall. His Edward is appalling, disgraceful, and ultimately pitiful.
Wicked Little Letters is engaging, thoughtful, and provocative. In a way, it is sort of a Barbie period piece, but while both are very good films, Letters addresses the domination, subjugation, and—finally—struggles of women that are sadly as relevant today as they were one hundred years ago.