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Based on a juicy true story from 1920s England about two neighboring countries locked in a literal war of words, director Thea Sharrock’s irreverent arthouse film tweaks a traditionally overly polite genre.
A hundred years ago, before email and social media discovered how to slap us in the face with unsolicited obscenities on a daily basis, the sleepy English town of Littlehampton was scandalized by an explosion of poison pen letters. was hit by. This is today a troubling case of letter terrorism. It may be classified under the category of “trolling”. A man with beautiful handwriting and a very salty vocabulary scattered dozens (if not hundreds) of highly offensive notes to people in seaside communities, sparking a police investigation and local media coverage. was largely forgotten for almost a year after sparking a series of breathtakingly publicized trials. century.
“Wicked Little Letters” is a bawdy black comedy that is not as “outrageous” as it is led to believe, and is a tongue-in-cheek recreation of the events on the Merchant Ivory set. Inciting profanity aside, the film is a relatively tame critique of the gender dynamics of the 1920s, focusing on the two women at the center of the case, a vocal spinster named Edith Swann who received most of the harassment; and her destructive Irish neighbor Rose. Gooding, whom she accused of sending her the vile letters, and the female detective responsible for solving the mystery.
A detective can easily tell that this is quite unusual. It’s a historical drama, with three women in the main roles, set in (in the words of a local priest) “a time when morals were threatened and women were threatened.” There is a lack of manners everywhere. ” So it’s no wonder director Thea Sharrock assembled such a strong cast.
Edith is played by Olivia Colman, whose exaggerated piety is almost cartoonish, while Rose, a force of nature, is played to perfection by Wild Rose’s Jesse Buckley. Rose, a single mother with a black boyfriend (Malachi Kirby) who drinks, swears, and loves her 24/7, challenges the perverse Puritan patriarchy of her neighbors (in one scene In , her “furious jump” nearly caused the long-hanging cross to come off) – Edith struggles against the wall). Although the two characters have little difference, they are still said to have once been best friends.
Edith lives at home with her excruciatingly strict father (Timothy Spall), who spouts about women’s suffrage and other perceived threats to his authority, while Rose expresses her own ideas. Speak freely to people. For a moment Edith felt a kind of vicarious satisfaction in Rose’s liberated attitude. But Edith imagines that she is on the receiving end of Rose’s insults, and she can no longer bear it. “She’s a villain,” Edith complained to the police, a little too passionately. “And she is what we feared after the war.” Meanwhile, the authorities display a surprising lack of curiosity when presented with what at first glance seems like an obvious case.
Only Gladys Moss (We Are Ready Parts veteran Anjana Vasan) suspects otherwise, representing the weaker side of the central trio. As Sussex’s first ‘female police officer’, she faces sexism and racism every day in her job. Her male colleagues, for example, use the word “woman” as if it were “dog” – as if surprised that the opposite sex is such a support in a professional setting. Whenever possible, interrupt the locker room banter and put Gladys in her place. This is an excruciating production dynamic, one that Sherlock and screenwriter Johnny Sweet subtly point out.
The film feels very dated (almost irritatingly so) in its critique of religious hypocrisy and backward gender relations, but still the clown-like way in which these bigots and bigots are portrayed. I hope they add a little more nuance to this. In fact, the so-called “Littlehampton slander” is a twist that any sane audience member would expect to see. British courts at the time may not have taken handwriting tests seriously, but the evidence is clear to us. Moreover, the culprit is hiding in plain sight.
Meanwhile, as the case drags on, Edith seems to revel in the attention this humiliation brings, collecting newspaper articles about her humiliation. (As her mother, Gemma Jones scolds Edith not to be too proud.) Enduring such abuse could turn this vulgar old maid into an unlikely local celebrity. Who knew there was? The conflict between these two women contains a deeper commentary on the media and how the public seems to rejoice in scandals, making hasty judgments based on just a few facts. Sherlock’s Wicked Little Letters is a hilarious look at what feels like a primitive form of today’s online flame wars, where people take sides while commenters openly despise each other. It is something.
Ironically, no matter how harmful Edith and others found these personal attacks, publicizing what was written about them only compounded the humiliation. Good thing they did that, at least for us, because hearing Armando Iannucci-level insults hurled in this conservative 1920s environment is a riot. Amidst all the bullying, it is the free-spirited Rose who rises above the slander and shows what dignity looks like.
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