In my book, Olivia Colman can do just about anything.
Over just the past year, she’s performed miracles in film and on television with material far beneath her powers. She’s been able to make a truly unmemorable Marvel television series (Secret Invasion) at least partially watchable. She emerged unscathed from a dreadful FX adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. She even managed to deliver a light and very funny performance in the big-screen Wonka even if her scenes felt ripped from an entirely different film.
But when she’s given brilliant material as in FX’s The Bear, she’s able to take a nearly throw-away part and deliver one of the most memorable scenes of the 2023 television season.
Shockingly, after winning an Oscar in 2018 for Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favorite, these projects were what our creative minds offered Colman. These are roles that, with the one notable exception in The Bear, fail to live up to her vast talents. We’ve seen what she can do with subpar material, and naturally we long for scripts that can match her skill. We crave more films like The Lost Daughter or Empire of Light that can at the very least try to come to her table to play.
Colman’s latest film, the “naughty” British dark comedy Wicked Little Letters, doesn’t vastly alter this regrettable recent trajectory of disappointments. It’s a pedestrian effort stuffed with “women of a certain age” spouting frequent obscenities with panache. Many will undoubtedly find this hilarious, but to me, it feels incredibly old fashioned. Colman and her The Lost Daughter counterpart Jessie Buckley give the material every ounce of life possible, but there’s no denying that the story fails to live up to their standards.
Based on an impossibly true series of events, Letters stars Colman as Edith Swan, a good Christian spinster who receives dozens of filthy, insulting, and profane letters. She assumes they originate from her younger, wild child neighbor Rose (Buckley) after their initial, improbable friendship devolves into barely masked contempt. When local police agree with Swan’s assumption, Rose is arrested and will stand trial for indecency (or something like that). But did Rose write those letters? Do we care?
The answer is, of course, a spoiler, but it’s a spoiler that fans of the actress will deeply care about. Colman takes her underwritten role and imbues it with every bit of vitality she has in her toolkit. She boasts proper English restraint, masking a deep reservoir of discontent under the domineering eye of her father (Timothy Spall), while reading the offending letters out loud. She walks through scenes with a tightly wound physicality, and that beautifully juxtaposes against Buckley’s Rose and her uninhibited boisterousness. The end of the film gives her the opportunity to let go of social and familial restraints, and we are treated to a full-bodied moment of joy as Colman’s Edith is set free.
I would have preferred an entire film focusing only on the unlikely friendship between these two women — sinner and saint who desperately desires to sin. Yet, Wicked Little Letters forces us into a thinly plotted detective / trial story populated with supporting actors cast with a modern eye that fails to align with realities of the era. Yes, it’s a true story, but I was never fully convinced that the creative team truly understood these women. Colman’s Edith comes off better than Buckley’s Rose, but not by a significant margin. Their relationship and the story have potential for days, but the script ultimately fails them by relying too heavily on the allure of a well placed “fuck” or “twat.”
Overall, Wicked Little Letters is a forgettable piece of fluff unjustly elevated by its two central performances. I’m certain Buckley and Colman had a blast filming this, but they both deserve better material. I will watch nearly anything Olivia Colman does, but it would be nice to at least like the films that surround her.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Wicked Little Letters opens nationwide Friday, April 5.
