Rent Wicked Little Letters (2023)

Great chemistry between Colman & Buckley make up for the weak story & uneven tone - Wicked Little Letters review by Timmy B

A film which was front & center of the renaissance of the British film industry in many ways (by this I mean films released which were commercially successful as well as intriguing & idiosyncratic in their stories, which is such a welcome change from the endless stream of comic book/franchise drudge showing in cinemas,) there is much to like here.

The story itself is based on true events which scandalised Britain just after the events of WWI and was in many ways one of the first examples of widespread trolling, decades before social media infiltrated itself in so many of our lives. There are also extremely powerful & upsetting scenes of the discrimination which was rampant back then, whether towards women or minorities, as well as the demonisation of single mothers who may have fled a situation to save theirs & their children's lives.

Colman and Buckley are clearly having an absolute ball, their bristling encounters igniting the screen whenever they are together. It is also lovely to see that, despite the fact that she is not only an Oscar-winning Best Actress but also the film's producer, Colman allows the other actors, especially Buckley, to command the screen. So many actors in her position would use this sort of film as a vehicle to showcase their own status, with the other performers simply window-dressing. But there is not a bit of this here.

However, this film also has it's issues. The script itself is at times quite tonally uneven, as well as being probably 10-15 minutes too long. Unfortunately, and something that has been picked up by other reviewers, the other major issue I have is with the way the film handles the representation of minorities. It is clearly shown that the 1920's was a time of repression & if you were a woman or minority, you were disrespected in multiple despicable ways. But what this film does, diving into headfirst with huge force, is to double/treble/quadruple down on this progressive representation with slowly more tedious results.

As I have stated in many other reviews, I am not going to go down the rabbit hole of Woke & simply write-off this whole film, because not only is that trite, but also extremely lazy. My frustration & mentioning of it is criticising it from a filmmaking & scripting perspective. And in Wicked Little Letters, everyone in the police force is male, white & so stupid it's a wonder they could get dressed in the morning, apart from the one woman who is mixed race & cracks the case single-handedly. One of the protagonist's partners is black & his one significant action is to break up a fight between bigoted old white people. The list goes on & on...

And these endless different things are just repeatedly shoved in your face on screen, until you actually start to get annoyed with it. In many ways I thought back to both Empire of Light (also starring Colman,) and the 4th series of True Detective, in the sense that it becomes a great big gloopy soup of themes, with so many important issues fighting to fit into the story.

Despite all I have just said, I did enjoy the film. I just wished that it was more focussed & concise in it's delivery.

Slight little film - Wicked Little Letters review by LG

There is some top-notch swearing that puts me in mind of the quality of epithets from the The Thick Of It (if that programme was set in a wee rural town rather than Westminster.) A few laugh out loud moments of hilarity mainly in seeing Olivia Colman curse like a demon. The whole movie is rather slight though and the dialogue is pedestrian. Some great British actors bouy it up and it isn't a long film.

The fact behind this fiction might be a bit more interesting.