To start with I guess one must address the very British elephant in the room in that as a British cinema goer who spends his life going to the Cinema at least twice, if not three times a week, and with the delay of this film for some time until the new year – I have seen this trailer an ungodly amount of times, to the extent that I know all of the beats and nearly every single cut. So I was certainly ready to watch this film and with the calibre of talent on the screen I was even excited, the tone that was in the trailer was very jaunty and humorous underscored by Yes Sir, I Can Boogie that overall gave off a fun campy vibe, and with Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in it, well it looked to me like a sure-fire success, surely? However this trailer which I say without hyperbole I must have seen at least fifty times on the big screen was incredibly misleading in tone and humour and the actual film Wicked Little Letters was regrettably a lot more by the numbers and dower than one would wish it to be.
A recent review I saw in passing but did not read noted in its headline on the film that it was a “waste of talent” and in so many ways I would have to agree, for even in this film, that is by no means bad, but certainly not very interesting; both Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley remain two of our finest actresses we have working and to see them together on screen again (I know they weren’t ‘together’ in The Lost Daughter) is something. But this is your typical period bizarre true story that begins with yet another take on the cringey “we’re not going to say this is a true story, but we’ll do a funny title card saying that some of it is”, in this case reading “this story is more true than you’d think”. Jonny Sweet’s script that relays the true story of the Littlehampton letters and the verbally vulgar single mother who was caught up in the case as a prime suspect has the basis of a very interesting story, however the story is played out like a mystery without much of any building tension or mystery to it. By the time Sweet gives in and tells us who is actually writing the letters, a turn that I did see coming, we give way to a more interesting story, but by that time were far too busy wrapping up the plot. Now I can’t blame Sweet or director Thea Sharrock for the marketing of this film and its depiction of a lighter tone, but I can blame the imbalance of tone within the actual film on them. The film has a series of effecting moments of real horridness with the character of Colman’s father Timothy Spall, who is truly monstrous in a realistic way, even if the script at times moves him more towards the cartoonish, Spall never allows his performance to get there. But there is then so very much crudity and vulgarity played for laughs that just gets old so quickly. It’s not swearing for swearing’s sake because its of course the plot of the film, but it just gets quite tiresome rather soon.
Perhaps it is
the understatement of the year, or more so the most obvious statement of the
year that both Colman and Buckley are wonderful in this film. But it does feel like
supremely like they are elevating material rather than meeting it. If it was not
for them being as wonderful, complex, raucous and subdued as ever, then this
film would be even lower in my estimations. Much the same can be said for every
actor who pops up and makes an appearance, it is afterall in that classic mould
where each face that pops up is a recognisable one and everybody does a fine
job at elevating sub-par material based around a fairly interesting story
mishandled with no craft of tone. In regards to this tone and the stakes of the
film, a lot is made of how Buckley’s character is a single mother and with a
new man, similarly a lot is made historically of the female police officer who
was involved the case, in the sense of with both how during this early 1920’s
era neither are respected or trusted. The film has cast a series of diverse
actors beyond our leads who are all brilliant in the roles, but completely
undermine the credibility of much of the drama and truth of the film. So we are
to believe that everybody has an issue with a female police officer and never
once comments on the fact that she’s Indian in 1920, never mind the fact that
Moss in real life from my research was a white woman (but that’s another
matter). Nor do people ever comment that never mind Rose being a single mother
with a new man, that man is black? I have no issues with diverse casting, of
course I don’t – and again both Anjana Vasan and Malachi Kirby are great in
their respective roles – but when so much of your film is built around period
realistic reactions to gender and in the case of Buckley’s Irishness, indeed
her race, one does wonder how this was in any way going to strengthen the historical
aspects of the film. When it comes to the power of the horridness of other aspects
of the period it almost wholly undermines the stakes of the rest. In many ways
this represents the overall lack of a balance of tone that plagues the whole
film, not just it’s ensemble.
An unfortunately disappointing 4/10 with great potential but a series lack of tone. Colman and Buckley are brilliant as one would expect, but overall it’s a fairly interesting, if a little dull and overdrawn tale that takes too long to get to the interesting part and doesn’t go far enough to make the tale one we either care about or are wholly invested in, or for that matter one that comes to a satisfying conclusion. It’s the typical mediocre true story film that has qualms with changing some things, but then avoids adapting aspects to make the film arguably more intriguing, whilst presenting the whole thing with an annoying smug quality about ‘you won’t believe that this is true!’
P.S. A million original independent British films is till what I would take over another big budget superhero farce, but it is the middle of the road ones that are the most painful to get through. Or rather in this case the ones with such potential that are so disappointing overall.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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