It was the incredible Mel Brooks who once said “I’ve been accused of vulgarity. I say that’s bullshit”, a wonderful and witty quote from the master of comedy himself. This sentiment could easily be applied to the characters in Wicked Little Letters, a film that tells the little-known story of a community in the small, quaint English hamlet of Littlehampton who, at some point in the 1920s, found themselves plagued by a particular menace: someone from their village was sending out letters laden with profanity and ill-will, which became something of a minor crisis in this otherwise charming little down, leading to a police investigation, which ultimately tracked the most likely culprit, an Irish immigrant who was perceived as being the obvious suspect, based both on her penchant for vulgarity, and because she was viewed as an unseemly outsider. However, very soon it became clear that the most obvious solution was not necessarily the correct one. Thea Sharrock, who has been flirting with becoming one of the more reliable directors working today after a well-received body of work for the stage and television, as well as a couple of decent filmic endeavours, works closely with screenwriter Jonny Sweet to bring this story to life, and as the opening titles suggest, this story is almost entirely true, with the only reason most of us had never heard it before coming from the fact that it was essentially obscured by history until someone unearthed this peculiar event. Taking this delightfully strange historical story and bringing it to life in the form of this wonderfully irreverent, off-the-wall dark comedy that tells a hilarious story in a manner that is simple, concise and thoroughly effective, proving to be a reliably good time, following all the necessary guidelines to take this amusing anecdotal moment in history and forming it into something extremely compelling for several reasons that become extremely clear as the film goes on and we begin to understand its central premise and how it handles certain intriguing ideas.

Period pieces are essentially a dime a dozen, and at this point, for one to truly stand out, it needs to achieve something very special. It does help if a film has a clear, brief premise that can be summarized in only a sentence or two since capturing the audience’s attention from the start is always a good approach to ensure that whatever is being done is solid, nuanced and interesting, and we know exactly what is getting, rather than concealing the true nature of the narrative under layers. A film like Wicked Little Letters does benefit from the element of surprise, but the decision to make it clear from the start what this film was aiming to achieve only strengthens the story, since it doesn’t become solely an opportunity to hammer in the amusing story, but rather forces the film to find nuance in an otherwise unwieldy and somewhat challenging story that may seem simple in theory, but is far more complex than we would expect from a cursory glance, at least in terms of how it approaches the real-life events, which may seem hilariously peculiar, but was surprisingly more nuanced than we’d anticipate on the surface. Yet, we can’t deny that the majority of our fascination with this subject, as well as the aspect that lingers most strongly after the fact, is the wildly strange juxtaposition of having this quaint, proper community plagued by vulgarity, and the realization that this is factual and based on reality only makes it more effective, since having some historical background to this story not only proves that the past was not nearly as pleasant and decent a place as overly-sanitized accounts of history make it seem, but prove that some moments are simply too absurd to ever be anything but entirely authentic. A forgotten chapter in the past has been brought to life in this wonderfully odd curio of a film, and the efforts to tell the story in a manner that is both informative and wildly entertaining is one of the fundamental reasons why Wicked Little Letters is such a thorough delight from beginning to end.

Much of the appeal of Wicked Little Letters came in the decision to cast Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley as the feuding neighbours at the heart of the story. Both have spent a few years establishing themselves as two of the best actors of their generation and despite being from slightly different generations (to the point where they even played the same character at different ages in the questionable The Lost Daughter a few years back), they prove to have impeccable chemistry that Sharrock takes advantage of when crafting this film. Neither of them is doing anything particularly revolutionary since it is barely groundbreaking to imagine Colman playing a precious, overly-stuffy conservative woman and Buckley a foul-mouthed free spirit, as they had both played similar parts in the past. Yet, they’re still tremendous, and they turn in hilarious and compelling performances that help establish a clear foundation, both tonally and narratively, for this film. They’re joined by the wonderful Anjana Vasan in what is likely going to be a breakthrough film role for her after a few years of great work on stage. Playing the part of the mild-mannered but deeply committed female police officer who bears the burden of being a woman in an industry run by men, she is perhaps the heart of the film, and the person who carries most of the narrative in terms of progressing the plot. The supporting cast is filled with unforgettable characters, with Timothy Spall being as hilarious as ever as the pernickety patriarch, and the undeniably entertaining trio of Joanna Scanlen, Dame Eileen Atkins and Lolly Adefope forming a terrific Greek chorus that steals every scene they are in. As both a starring vehicle for Colman and Buckley, and as an ensemble piece, Wicked Little Letters is truly exquisite and manages to be a lot more compelling through how it develops these characters as more than just one-dimensional archetypes.

There is a lot more depth to Wicked Little Letters than we would expect at the start, which comes when we realize that these performances, as tremendous as they are, actually open the door to a much more complex conversation. This isn’t one of those comedies that undergoes a random shift in tone in the third act, moving from an off-the-wall comedy to something more sombre, but there are more dramatic elements that pad the film and give it a lot more depth, particularly in how the story looks at these events as being indicative of a particular time and place. As much as we’d relish in the idea of a wacky comedy focusing on a group of supposedly proper people breaking decorum and descending into a flurry of vulgarity, there is a method to the madness, and we find that Wicked Little Letters is a surprisingly moving story of female independence and the way women in the past had to fight against patriarchal systems to earn their place in the world. The three central performances (as well as a bevvy of those that exist in the periphery) are all vibrant depictions of very different women struggling to find a place within a society defined by the interests of men, and where everything a woman does has to be filtered through the lens of the patriarchy, and adhering to the strict codes of social decorum, which very rarely favour women in any case. The film handles the more complex side of the film well – for every insightful and sobering detail, there is an equally amusing moment of comedy, which creates a balance and provides some kind of tonal symbiosis, the more comedic moments softening the dramatic material, which in turn add context and allow the film to be a lot more layered than simply 100 minutes of wall-to-wall profanity. There is a lot of underlying meaning to this film, and while we will likely remember the comedic aspects more, it does help add shades of nuance to an otherwise irreverent film that could have been hopelessly convoluted without the right balance between tone and approach.

It is clear from the first moments that Wicked Little Letters is the product of someone who has spent years curating works for the stage, since there is something profoundly theatrical about absolutely every aspect of this film, from how it tells the story to the visual design of the film, which proves to be an unexpectedly deep and complex bundle of ideas that some may assume would betray the irreverence of the material, but which is massively supported by the story. Sharrock is a terrific director, and while her distinct style as a filmmaker has not yet emerged fully (solely because she has only made a small handful of films so far), there is something very engaging about how she handles this story, and working with a screenplay that could have been interpreted in any number of ways, she shows a tremendous aptitude for detail, both narratively and in terms of the visual realization of the film. Naturally, some degree of artistic liberty was taken in bringing this story to life, even in terms of the design of the village. The bright colours and quaint costumes are a construction since it is unlikely this working-class village would look like something plucked straight out of a pristine BBC serial, but this is all part of the appeal of Wicked Little Letters, which uses a heightened sense of design to contrast with the story, which is all about the vulgar and profane infilitrating the perfectly-composed, elegant lives of these people, who simply want to go about their day in their perfect little village, only to have their lives thrown into disarray as a result of these letters, which become something of a social epidemic amongst the community. It is bitingly funny and Sharrock’s direction makes sure to emphasize that this may be based on a true story, but the silliness and absurdity are heightened to the point where it sometimes is intentionally played as an off-kilter parody of these straight-laced prestige period dramas, which only strengthens the narrative and makes it exponentially more entertaining.

The concept of reality being stranger than fiction has rarely been more true than in the case of the Littlehampton letters and all the circumstances that surrounded this bizarre moment in history, which is gloriously brought to life in this delightful and oddly quite effective dark comedy that never trivializes the subject matter, but instead uses it as the foundation for a clever, earnest examination of the past through a distinctly entertaining lens. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about what this film says or does, and a lot of it requires us to pay attention to the smaller details to see just how detailed some of these ideas are. Yet, we are never once bored or anything less than entirely entertained by how this film takes such bold and unquestionably daring risks with a story that could have been convoluted in the wrong hands and lost the majority of the impact made along the way. It’s a wonderfully endearing and captivating dark comedy with an air of genuine suspense and some wonderfully entertaining surprises along the way. It features fantastic work from a tremendous cast, and the writing is sharp and layered, enough to be a multidimensional, intelligent comedy that doesn’t dwell on the profanity in a way that is anything less than entirely authentic. Ultimately, the brilliance of this film comes from its simplicity, and this is the main reason why Wicked Little Letters is such a thorough delight from the start, and precisely why it will likely come to be seen as one of the many terrific comedies that push boundaries in a way that doesn’t only entertain, but also offers genuinely interesting insights into this absurd chapter of the past.