It’s not a whodunit.  It’s a who-wrote-it.  That’s the tagline for Wicked Little Letters, the most recent comedy to explore how one person’s personal letters can upset and divide an entire community.  This premise has been explored before, though usually regarding romantic missives that are misunderstood or which involve mistaken identity, a plot device used to great success by William Shakespeare and many others.  This time, the letters are wildly profane and invoke reader feelings that are the opposite of romantic.

Thea Sharrock’s film recreates (but changes in fundamental ways) a true incidence in 1920s England of a middle-aged woman, Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), receiving a series of heinous, insulting, lewd notes in the mail.  Edith’s martinet figure of a father (Timothy Spall) takes them to the police and has their foul-mouthed young neighbor, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) arrested for them.  But there is much more to the story than meets the eye.

I love when filmmakers delve into history for inspiration and find stories like this that can be developed into full-fledged movies.  Bravo for the effort.  I must confess, however, that I knew who the real letter-writer was going to be from the very first shot of the movie.  My wife Barb guessed it early as well.  Ms. Sharrock and her team should have done a better job at disguising the matter; it never blossoms as a genuine mystery.  Yet there are other merits.  The acting is first-rate; the dialogue is sharp (and sizzling); the script does a fine job of enumerating the changing role of women in British society at that time, and especially the police force; the science used to solve the mystery is smart and satisfying.  Most importantly, the psychology of the situation is presented deftly and with compassion — ultimately, I felt a surprising kinship with the letter writer because of their circumstances.

I also find it fascinating that this story is presented as a comedy.  I think that is almost certainly because of the salty language; profanity has been around forever yet the ratings system forces films to play games with how dialogue is presented.  Here, the overtly sexual and ostentatiously exorbitant profanity is so insulting and lewd that the story’s actual characters are shocked to their bones, but we modern audiences just find it funny.  The film winks at the audience as Buckley, in particular, swears up a storm without a second thought, whether her young daughter is present or not.  This attitude turns what was in real life a deplorable drama into a satirical view of puritanical prudishness.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  But then I wonder if this was the best approach, and I wonder if I should be laughing at the joke this movie is making about this situation.  And then I wonder what a powerful and impactful drama a Sidney Lumet or a Richard Attenborough could have made with the same material.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  17 April 2024.