It is one amusing irony of many in “Wicked Little Letters” that Rose (Jesse Buckley) may be exonerated for capitalizing her Fs when mostly she’s been excoriated for doing so. Saying one particular four-letter word comes as naturally to the war widow as breathing, which is why it’s easy to point the finger in her direction when nasty notes start arriving at mailboxes around town in Thea Sharrock’s deviously delightful comedy, shrewdly set during the roaring twenties in England where the post-World War I landscape divided the country between those emboldened to seize the day and others who clung more tightly to its Protestant and patriarchal past. Rose’s leading accuser Edith (Olivia Colman) is of the latter variety, still living with her stern father Edward (Timothy Spall) and mother (Gemma Jones) in middle age and irritated by her foul-mouthed next door neighbor, either as an affront to her religious beliefs or the begrudging admiration she has for her autonomy.
The set-up of Jonny Sweet’s fiendishly crafted screenplay could easily give way to a back-and-forth feud that would surely entertain, particularly when pitting as formidable actors as Buckley and Colman as bitter adversaries, but “Wicked Little Letters” has an ace up its sleeve by giving equal time, if not more to Anjana Vasan as constable Gladys Moss, the doe-eyed officer who doesn’t believe the case is as open-and-shut as her largely male colleagues believe. The breakout from the final season of “Killing Eve” as a pregnant assassin in training starts seeing just as many crimes being committed on the opposite side of the law as Moss, deducing from Rose’s penmanship that something more sinister might be afoot. Sweet and Sharrock are wise not to overly concern themselves about who’s writing the letters, but rather the domino effect it has in the tight-knit community where the officer starts picking up support for her investigation from a rogue’s gallery of locals while seeing none from within her own department.
Although the language throughout “Wicked Little Letters” is decidedly R, the tone is a more genteel PG-13 and while careful not to be too cutthroat, the film makes sharp observations about women growing discontent with the roles they’ve been assigned in society and beginning to elbow their way out rather than against one another. Sharrock needn’t put too fine a point on things with a cast this strong, where one can see Colman’s transformation play out entirely in her facial expressions, clearly reveling in playing a pious hypocrite who loves the attention she’s receiving from the brouhaha but destined to not have the last laugh when all her efforts against Rose are ultimately working against her. But in slyly telling a story of progress, the “Me Before You” director does keep the action apace at a galvanizing clip, able to play the absurdity of the situation for punchlines as the community is caught up in the frenzy of a scandal and ultimately slowing it down to reveal what the true joke is. “Wicked Little Letters” may revolve around a mysterious author, but a talented cast and crew put their signature all over it.
“Wicked Little Letters” does not yet have U.S. distribution.