film fatales #210: wicked little letters (thea sharrock, 2023)

Wicked Little Letters offers a fun, fact-based movie that gives co-stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley an excuse to show why they are popular. That it doesn't do more than that isn't a crime, but the result isn't quite as funny as you might hope. The premise is that someone in a small English town is writing vile poison-pen letters filled with dirty words. Colman is the recipient of them, while Buckley is the neighbor accused of being the author.

It's initially entertaining to hear the letters read aloud, as one after another stereotypical English person spouts obscenities. Buckley is delightful as usual as an Irish woman who swears up a storm, and she isn't the most logical suspect ... as she points out, why would she write the letters when she is perfectly happy to bark bad words to people's faces.

There's a subtext about women in the 1920s trying to emerge from the strictures of society, but it doesn't get in the way of the farce, which is perhaps a missed opportunity. Fans of the stars will be happy.