Wicked Little Letters

Post Pardon Depression

or

A Comedy of Ill-Manners

 

I think I've mentioned before that you can't watch a British mystery series without one episode involving the investigation of a rash of poison-pen letters (that may or may not be true) that disrupt a community. There was one major movie, Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Raven, that we mentioned previously. 

 

The origin of this particular trope came from the scandal of the "Littlehampton Letters", a Sussex incident that caused quite the scandal between 1920 and 1923. The general story is that Edith Swan, a spinsterish woman who lived with her upright Christian parents, began to receive letters of an unseemly manner and of such vulgarity that she made complaints to the police. Suspicions immediately turned to Edith's neighbor on Western Street, Rose Gooding, as Rose seemed a person of questionable character, known for causing rows and for her obscenity-laced language. It didn't help that the letters appeared to be signed by Rose. That first letter started: "You bloody old cow, mind your own business and there would be no rows. – R." That Rose had a child and was living with a man didn't help things. Nor did that the letters appeared after Rose was reported to Child Protective Services by someone in the neighborhood.

Rose was arrested and charged with criminal libel, and as she could not afford bail, she was in prison for three months. During Rose's incarceration, the letters naturally ceased. When she was released, the letters began again, expanding in scope, and Rose was again arrested, convicted and sentenced to 12 months in prison.

All neat and tidy, said the law. But the story didn't end there, through the efforts of a dogged police-woman—Sussex's first—Woman Police Constable Gladys Moss, who began to suspect that things weren't as neat and tidy as her male counterparts believed it to be. With the help of Scotland Yard, she was able to trace who the letters were coming from—the courts wouldn't allow writing analysis in the trials—and catch the actual culprit in the act.

Wicked Little Letters tells the story of the case, and, truly, it lives up to it's opening title: "This is more true than you'd think." Oh, there are little changes here and there, mostly for the sake of diversity in casting, and to ram home the point that those times were more prejudicious than our own (although it's ironic that they try to make the point of how good we've got it by casting non-white players to signal to us that these people are dealing with oppression and prejudice*). Actually, our times are just as bad, only less by a matter of degrees.

Edith Swan is played by Olivia Colman, her parents by Timothy Spall and Gemma Jones. Jessie Buckley is Rose Gooding and her live-in man is Malachi Kirby. Anjana Vasan plays Woman Police Constable Moss, and Rose's neighborhood allies include Eileen Atkins, Lolly Adefope, and Joanna Scanlan. However much kerfluffle may have been going on in Western Street in the 1920's, it couldn't have been as entertainingly chaotic as this cast makes the circumstances involved. Colman, particularly, is a study in contrasts. Initially making friends with Buckley's Rose, Colman's Edith couldn't be more thrilled—a little shocked at her raw forthrightness—as Rose is as free-spirited as Edith is repressed, belittled, and subjugated in her father's household. When the whole letter-thing is delivered at her doorstep, she becomes alternately victimized, outraged, and (once the papers get ahold of it) prideful of her role as upright citizen standing up for the decency of civilization. Her performance is a master-class of expressiveness whatever the role Edith takes on.

And Buckley holds her own with the more ostentatious part as Rose, unapologetically coarse even as she's being accused of coarseness, while fully realizing that she is just a gavel's slam away from losing her family as a consequence. But, her Rose is a scrapper, not willing to go down without a fight, even as it appears as her whole world is falling apart. And Vajan, after years of bit parts and one-line roles, pops right out of the screen as a determined copper not content to merely know her place, her eyes almost comically revealing the frustration and battling fierceness required to see justice done. 

Wicked Little Lies careens between comic (it's rated "R" for hysterically "pervasive language"), dire, and subversive—when dealing with authority figures (predominantly male)—and made with the intent of taking the mickey out of the status quo. There is just the hint of hysteria in the parties involved rebelling against their circumstances, even if the actions don't quite push through the complacency. One wants to call it a comedy of manners, if it wasn't so enthusiastically ill-mannered.

It's also rather deliciously quaint, as one can only imagine the reaction any of these characters would have if they were exposed to social media.

 

Crikey!

 

* I don't want to harp on this too much, because I'll sound like some backwards stick-in-the-mud—you cast people because they're good, not because they're a "type"—but it occurs in the same way with the writers portraying Rose Gooding as an Irish immigrant, to reinforce that she was an outsider of "low" character. Gooding was born in Lewes in Sussex, and merely moved into the neighborhood, rather than coming from Ireland. Sometimes I think these things are betraying prejudices in the act of pointing them out. Anyway, the real people were all lily-white, and the actors portraying them are damned good.

The Invitation (2022)

Good Help With Good Taste Are So Hard To Find

or

"That's the Whitest Man I've Ever Seen"

 

I'm not a big fan of horror movies and rarely write about them unless there's something that makes the genre rise above the form. I usually confine them to the month of October—Hallowe'en month, of course—when you're SUPPOSED to pay attention to them. The rest of the time...meh...there's enough horror in the world...

 

But, I wanted to see The Invitation for a very specific reason after seeing the previews. I won't say why, because it's irrelevant to the movie, and there's a post I'm doing in October that will explain all. But, I was interested, but not so much that I put off seeing it for a week or two.

 

The Invitation has so many cliche's running through its blood-stream that one can hardly stop giggling all the way through it. First shot—an up-lit "spooky house" with an animated lightning strike (with instantaneous thunder) that lights up the screen. When the lightning strikes twice, we're not in the same place, the flash hiding a cut to the interior, with a soundtrack of creaks, groans, chains (chains?) and distant thunder and every knock on the door spells doom. Director Thompson leans so far into the horror conventions that when something different does happen (the background score even contains a theremin-like melody), you're apt not to believe it.

Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) is a "caterer" in New York. Actually, she's a waitress, while she working on her MFA in ceramics, like she's going to have a ghost of a chance at that. Anyway, her last job had a goody bag in it with a DNA test, and as her folks are dead, she has a sudden desire to look for family...and to be used in all sorts of criminal investigations. Big surprise, she finds a cousin, Oliver Alexander (Hugh Skinner), who is only too overjoyed to find another relative and insists that she accompany him to a family wedding in England. His treat. 

 

There has to be a movie so she accepts. Horror movies cannot exist if people only do smart things. It's also why democracies are so tenuous.

She's almost a little too American for the family housed at Carfax Abbey (Carfax Abbey...why does THAT sound familiar?), an ancient mansion that appears to be made of white LEGO blocks. She bonds with "the help," is a little clumsy while she goggles at the grandeur of it all, and seems to get on the bad side of butler Mr. Field (Sean Pertwee) when she meets the lord of the mans', Walter De Ville (Thomas Doherty). De Ville is charming in an intense, rather animalistic sort of way and takes a delighted interest in Evie. His approval makes things easier on her when she meets the family, but she is still uneasy. She sees the face of a woman that stares at her in moments of unease. Floorboards creak, the shrikes outside are restless, shadows undulate...and so does the canopy of her bed (are those hands?).

But, Walter is there to soothe with his too-wide smile and his habit of wearing a wife-beater. He seems to be the most sympathetic member of the tri-family, certainly more than cousins Viktoria (Stephanie Corneliussen) and Lucy (Alana Boden)—Viktoria is particularly a jealous sort and Lucy...(wait a minute, Lucy?).

Well, it starts to get a little too familiar...not only between Walter and Evie, who start snogging, but also with the story, which seems to be following the line of a particularly famous horror story, which has been filmed many times and may be owned by another film studio that he is not named.

Sure enough, Walter is He-Who-Cannot-Contractually-Be-Named and his intention is to make Evie his new bride—the others being Viktoria and Lucy. How will she escape her fate? How will it all be resolved? Why doesn't everybody have fangs? Why do they cavort in the day-time? Oh, that's all dispensed with quick shots and some throw-away references to "rumors." Nothing new under the moon. Geez, there aren't even any bats!

What's different is that the story is usually told with a "women are victims" bite, and this one stakes new territory, in the wake of the #metooth movement. Evie—Evie?—is the first woman (well, besides, Buffy) to take an active part in the dispatching of her oppressors. Given that most of the talent behind The Invitation are women, one can only say "it's about damn time." But, whether that becomes a trend...well, this vampire has a long track record. We'll see if that trope stays staked.