Wicked Little Letters (2024)

Plot of Wicked Little Letters: In a residential street in Littlehampton two neighbours, Rose Gooding and Edith Swan are at odds when Edith begins to receive abusive letters. They used to be friends. Edith is a spinster living with her domineering father and meek mother and Rose is living with her black boyfriend and her daughter, whose father has apparently been killed in the Great War.  The obvious writer of the letters is Rose who has no problem expressing herself and is ready to give anyone who offends her a good tongue lashing, so she is arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial. However, despite opposition from the chief of police, female constable Gladys Moss does not believe it, and with the assistance of other ladies of the town, who first of all pay Rose’s bail, investigate the crime. They know who the culprit is but must find a way of catching them red handed.

Content:  No nudity, although sounds of sex taking place are heard in Edith’s house through the common wall. There are various scenes in the local pub, inevitably including drinking, but nothing is made of it. Rose nuts a man who is insulting at Edith’s father’s birthday party, and is generally loud, but somehow charming. She keeps her daughter in order. In Edith’s house her father is extremely unpleasant and her mother is pretty silent, until she dies of a heart attack after reading the latest letter. In the police station Gladys, who is of Asian heritage, battles against her superiors to attempt to get them to change their view of Rose’s guilt.

A View: My wife and I usually go to the cinema in Madrid on a Friday afternoon, choosing what we see as being the best of what’s on, hence how this outing came up. It has been quite well liked by most of the critics, although the general comment might be that the plot is a bit thin. The two houses have a collective yard with a single lavatory, could that have been true? I have lived in a house with a collective yard built in about 1900. Each of the properties had its own lavatory in the yard. Overall it is a fun film with a cast made up of some of Britain’s great and good, so worth the admission price, if you can find it.

Fun Fact: Ethnic diversity? The judge is black – although the first black judge in the Uk was not appointed until 2004.