Wicked Little Letters, available to stream, is a film that’s told with a comical and breezy tone but is based on troubling circumstances that actually occurred in the 1920’s.
Peter Debruge, Variety, briefly explains the background: “…(T)he quiet English town of Littlehampton was scandalized by an outburst of poison pen letters…Someone with lovely penmanship and a very salty vocabulary dashed off dozens (if not hundreds) of blisteringly offensive notes to members of the seaside community, igniting a police investigation and a series of trials breathlessly covered by the local press, then largely forgotten for almost a century.”
Watch the trailer:
Laura Venning, Empire, sets up the film’s fictionalized story and lead characters: “Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) is an upstanding member of her community: a godly woman who still lives with her elderly parents and whose idea of a wild evening is a stimulating game of whist. Meanwhile, her neighbour Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), recently arrived from Ireland, is fond of a drink, sweary and sexually liberated, while also a loving mother…Edith accuses Rose of sending her a series of creatively insulting anonymous letters, the latest of which calls Edith a ‘foxy-arsed old whore’ and a ‘sad, stinky bitch’.”
Spoiler Developments
Did Rose really do it? We immediately think not. If not her, who? The town’s token (and non-white) female police officer, Gladys (Anjana Vasan), mistreated by the men in her unit, secretly enlists the help of several citizens, all women, in order to track down the real culprit. Is it Edith, now all “in love with her own martyrdom and new-found fame” (Empire), who may actually be sending the letters herself?!
Brace yourself: it is.
Nicholas Quah, Vulture: “…a middle-age woman who ultimately finds power and release — after being suffocated by religion and the patriarchy for much of her life — in the production of violent, obscene, sexually charged words. It’s such an interesting idea, and it adds great texture to the character: a woman who weaponizes what little she can against another woman of lower class.”
And it turns out Edith’s behavior is increasingly out of control. Many in the community will also be targeted by her nasty missives.
Pre-Internet Trolling
Comparing these assaults-by-letter to today’s internet trolling, critic Sheila O’Malley, rogerebert.com, states, “A person may be perfectly pleasant ‘in real life’, and when hiding behind a pseudonym they are a demon.”
Edith: Her Family, Her Home Life
Although all her other siblings have flown the coop, Edith still lives with her parents: an angry, strict father who uses religion abusively and a mother who sits silently by and who wails repeatedly that the continually incoming letters will be “the death” of her. The latter proves to be correct.
Despite appearances, Edith may be fine with that, just as she is with eventually bidding her father a hearty good riddance.
Effects of Toxic Masculinity
A main theme of Wicked Little Letters is that of toxic masculinity. David Fear, Rolling Stone:
Given the stifling social mores of the period and the toxic patriarchal attitudes — notably from Edith’s father, whose tantrums over being considered a ‘Nancy boy’ suggest a lot of projected insecurity — it’s not a leap to see why Rose or Gladys bristle at the double standards on display. Indeed, the numerous scenes of ‘Woman Police Officer Moss’ (a title that Rose posits is both obvious and useless) silently fuming and shuddering with anger over constantly being demeaned, underestimated, shoved aside or lectured at by incompetent boobs is nothing less than the film’s subtext poking through the text.
