By Mopsy Peel
The art of female anger has rarely been a subject for delicate inspection, particularly in film. More often, it is crammed into tight archetypes – shrill, hysterical and unreasonable. Yet in Wicked Little Letters, directed by Thea Sharrock, we are offered a rare portrayal of this emotion as something complex and empowering. Based on a true story, Wicked Little Letters weaves fact with flair, turning an improbable tale of scandal and subversion into a rich exploration of female rage, defiance, and the power of the written word.
Olivia Colman takes the helm as Edith Swan: a buttoned-up spinster of 1920s Littlehampton whose Christian virtue is matched only by her insufferable smugness. She is a figure moulded by propriety – every glance a judgment, every utterance calculated. Yet, beneath the starch and rosary beads simmers an anger that will not stay suppressed. Her weapons of choice are anonymous, venomous letters brimming with blasphemies and insults, mailed to unsuspecting neighbours. These are no simple verbal outbursts to be easily dismissed or forgotten. Instead, they are immortalised in ink, transcending the fleeting nature of spoken anger and embedding themselves in the consciousness of their readers. This transference of voice is a potent mechanism. The letters, read aloud by their recipients, remove ownership from Edith while amplifying her defiance. It is a small yet seismic rebellion against the silence demanded of women in this era. The act is, in its own way, a kind of liberation.
The tradition of letter-writing as an outlet for female emotion is nothing new. For centuries, women have turned to the pen to articulate passions too dangerous or unbecoming to voice. In Edith’s case, her repressed fury at her overbearing family and the suffocating norms of her community spills out in scrawled obscenities. It begins as a small act of defiance but quickly morphs into an addiction. Where others might step outside for a cigarette, Edith retreats upstairs, pen in hand, to unleash lines like “you foxy-arsed old whore,” or, my personal favourite, “you mangey old titless turnip”.
The film presents Edith’s venom alongside Jessie Buckley’s feisty Rose Gooding, an Irish maid whose presence electrifies every scene she graces. Buckley’s accent dances on the edge of the poetic, rolling profundities off her tongue with an ease that both disarms and delights. Rose is everything Edith is not: brazen, unafraid, and unapologetically alive. Her rebellion is not cloaked in anonymity but lived out loud, an enchanting spectacle of fearlessness in an era that demanded women shrink themselves.
The humour in Wicked Little Letters is an art form unto itself, a tapestry of wit and absurdity woven through its every scene. Anjana Vasan and Lolly Adefope, whose comedic talents are already well-cemented (Adefope especially delighting audiences as Kitty in the BBC show Ghosts), bring a vitality to the film that elevates its mischief. Joanna Scanlan, brilliant as ever and fondly remembered as Terri Coverley in The Thick of It, adds her own brand of comedic gold, her expressions delivering punchlines as sharp as the letters themselves. Together, this trio creates a riot of perfectly timed quips and glorious deliveries, transforming the prim 1920s setting into an unrelenting parade of laughter, their modern comedic genius crackling through the tension of a period drama-turned-caper.
The power dynamics within the film’s domestic sphere sharpen this portrait of female rage. Edith’s family is a depiction of repression: a meek, passive mother and a controlling father whose rigid discipline keeps the household in check. It is no wonder that Edith, faced with such stifling circumstances, finds solace in her ink-stained rebellion. In the film’s final act, Edith is arrested – a culmination of her transgressions. But the moment is far from one of shame or defeat. Instead, it is a release, a shedding of the expectations that have shackled her. As she is led away, there is satisfaction in her eyes. For the first time, she is free, not just from her family, but from the burden of maintaining her mask of propriety.
As the final frame settles, Wicked Little Letters leaves us suspended in a paradox, refusing easy catharsis. Edith’s defiance doesn’t culminate in a tidy reckoning; instead, we feel both relief for Rose’s vindication and quiet optimism for Edith. Bridging these two emotional extremes through contradictory empathy strikes me as both a masterful achievement in writing and a testament to the enduring strength of the theme itself, transcending the situation at hand. Edith’s imprisonment, though a downfall by conventional standards, resists tragedy. Her rebellion is not undone by punishment but crystallised in it.
This depiction of female defiance is refreshing in its honesty. It does not glamorise or sanitise Edith’s anger but acknowledges it as a natural, even necessary, response to her circumstances. Her letters are not polite cries for help; they are visceral, unfiltered eruptions of a rage long ignored. And yet, they are also an affirmation of agency, a refusal to be silent. Wicked Little Letters invites us to consider the power of words, not merely as tools of communication but as vessels of emotion and rebellion. In Edith’s story, anger is not something to fear or suppress. It is something to write, to read, and, perhaps most importantly, to understand.
Feature Image: Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman in Wicked Little Letters. Photograph: Toronto Film Festival. [The Guardian].