Foul-Mouthed Period Comedy 'Wicked Little Letters' Sets Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley at Odds

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the North American rights to the feature film Wicked Little Letters, a foul-mouthed period comedy starring Olivia Colman (The Crown) and Jessie Buckley (Fingernails). The film, which reteams former The Lost Daughter co-stars, is based on a true story of a dark and absurd nineteenth-century scandal and features the sort of raunchy language and bawdy humor we very rarely associate with historical films. (As if profanity is some sort of modern day invention!)

Set in a 1920s English seaside town Wicked Little Letters sees two very different neighbors come together to solve a rather vulgar mystery. When various residents of the small town of Littlehampton begin receiving bizarre letters laced with explicit and frequently obscene language, the deeply conservative Edith Swan (Colman) immediately suspects rowdy Irish migrant Rose Gooding (Buckley) of being behind the strange phenomenon. (After all, she's got something of a history of using colorful language in public and she's a foreigner, to boot.)

But Rose --- now threatened with the loss of her own freedom and custody of her daughter --- insists she's innocent, and a group of resourceful local women (including Edith) will have to join forces in order to find out the truth.