Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
When the denizens of Littlehampton – including conservative Edith – begin receiving letters full of hilarious profanities, rowdy Irish migrant Rose is charged with the crime. Suspecting something amiss, the town's women band together to investigate.
Wicked Little Letters is elevated primarily by its outstanding ensemble cast, with Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley delivering brilliantly comic and nuanced performances that give the film much of its energy. The true-crime comedic premise is engaging and the period setting is well-rendered, but the plot follows a fairly predictable trajectory once the central mystery is established. Cinematography is competent and period-appropriate without being particularly distinctive. The film carves out a modest sense of novelty through its gleeful embrace of profanity within a buttoned-up Edwardian setting and its feminist undercurrent, but it doesn't fully transcend its crowd-pleaser origins. The ending is satisfying but somewhat tidy.