Wicked Little Letters review: Olivia Colman hurling expletives is enough to sustain this witty true-life comedy

Colman plays a judgy 1920s Little Englander inundated with vulgar correspondences in the post – with Jessie Buckley’s colourful Irish immigrant the prime suspect

If there are no other pleasures to Wicked Little Letters beyond the tome’s worth of expletives launched by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, then so be it. That’s plenty enough to sustain this witty, joyously written piece of forgotten history, scripted by comedian Jonny Sweet. Colman plays Edith Swan, the Littlehampton resident who, in the early 1920s, found herself inundated with vulgar correspondences, peppered with phrases like: “The cakes you make look like they’ve fallen out of some f***ing sheep’s f***ing arsehole”. Buckley, in turn, plays Rose Gooding, the Irish immigrant with a colourful turn of phrase, who was dragged into court accused of authoring the letters, on the sole evidence that she seemed rude enough to have done it.

Colman and Buckley, clearly, are delighted by the material at hand. They savour every “piss country wh***” and “foxy-assed rabbit f*****s” as they would a monologue by Arthur Miller. These are larger-than-life performances but knowingly so, delivered with a slapstick sensibility that sees Buckley streak naked across the village, aim darts at a man’s head, and take a shovel to the face.

Colman, meanwhile, offers an indulgent, self-satisfied smile – truly, like the cat who just raided the birdcage – when the judge refers to her as a “pretty, young Christian woman”. Here, she gets to demonstrate in minor form the kind of talent that won her the Academy Award for The Favourite. She has a canny ability to take silly, superfluous people, and elevate them in both humanity and tragedy.

Wicked Little Letters nods to the post-war shifts in women’s societal roles – not only in its use of foul language, of course, but in the way a single mother like Rose lives openly and unmarried with another man (Malachi Kirby’s Bill). “She’s what we feared would come after the war,” Edith warns.

Yet Edith must also wrangle herself out from under the hand of her domineering father, Edward (Timothy Spall), who’s already whittled her mother (Gemma Jones) down into a crumb of a person. Meanwhile, the local “woman police officer”, WPC Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan), strives to be taken seriously by her dim-witted and chauvinistic colleagues.

Really, any form of observation here is secondary to the softer, sweeter little bits of character work, and to the fine-tuned comedic performances – where even Tim Key’s single scene as an unnervingly soft-spoken priest feels ideally pitched. It’s immediately obvious whether Rose is guilty, and who the real culprit might otherwise be, but Sweet’s script is interested primarily in how a mystery like this might spread across a sleepy, button-down town. Lolly Adefope, Eileen Atkins and Joanna Scanlan feature as an amusing trio who can’t help but poke their noses into the investigation.

Gasp: Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman in ‘Wicked Little Letters’ (Supplied)

It’s clear, too, that director Thea Sharrock and cinematographer Ben Davis appreciate the kind of talent they have on board. The camera looks up to Colman and Buckley in adulation, often allowing their features to seize the entire frame. Here’s a film that understands perfectly well that the two of them are all we need to enjoy ourselves.

Dir: Thea Sharrock. Starring: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Joanna Scanlan, Gemma Jones, Malachi Kirby, Lolly Adefope, Eileen Atkins, Timothy Spall. Cert 15, 100 minutes

‘Wicked Little Letters’ is in cinemas from 23 February