The film from director Thea Sharrock reunites The Lost Daughter stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley for a far goofier tale. The Oscar winner and Oscar nominee, respectively, play warring neighbors in a tiny English village in the 1920s, and there is a glorious gusto to their very funny performances. Colman is Edith Swan, an uptight and ostensibly pious woman who lives with her demanding father (Timothy Spall in full grumbly mode) and her timid mother (Gemma Jones). The action kicks off with the arrival of the 19th “poison pen” letter that Edith has received, a vindictive missive that targets the lonely woman with scandalous name-calling. The immediate suspect: Buckley's Rose Gooding, a boisterous Irish immigrant and widowed single mother, who drinks, curses, and has sex with her boyfriend (Malachi Kirby)—sex that Edith can hear through their thin walls. Rose is quickly arrested by the bumbling local authorities thanks to Edith's holier than thou account. In Edith's telling, the two were friendly when Rose moved to town, with Edith attempting to show her the ways of a respectable woman, but Rose rebuked her help (and accidentally hit her in the face with a toilet brush in the process). But there's something amiss, which police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan of We Are Lady Parts) sniffs out. Why would Rose, who never minces her words, hide behind anonymity? The mystery deepens where more residents of Littlehampton start being targeted. Who is calling people "piss country whores" and "foxy asses"? And why? And what's a "foxy ass"? Ultimately, Wicked Little Letters turns out to be not much of a whodunnit—frankly, you can probably guess now and get it right. But the lack of a real mystery doesn't really matter when Buckley and Colman are as delightful to watch as they are in this film. Colman understands Edith is a sad character deep down, but she also relishes in making the character subtly hateable. With a flick of her eyes or a purse of her lips, her Edith just can't hide her superiority complex, or the pride she takes in the attention she is getting as a quasi-martyr. Meanwhile, Buckley is having a raucous good time as Rose, who cares little what others think. It's a performance that recalls her breakout work in Wild Rose. Rose Gooding may be something of a mess, yet you want to spend time in her company. The rest of the cast is filled out with equally amusing work from the likes of Vasan, whose big, searching eyes are excellent vehicles for exasperation, as well as Hugh Skinner as her doltish colleague and Joanna Scanlan as an unhygienic local woman who helps Gladys unearth the real letter writers and loves eating boiled eggs. Remarkably, Wicked Little Letters is based on a true story. There’s a lot of meat in the narrative—about class prejudice and expectations placed on women in post-WWI society—that mostly goes unexplored in Jonny Sweet's script. In fact, the film falters the most when it tries to swerve into the serious; though Buckley can handle the tonal shift as it relates to her character, the rest of the production cannot. Still, the film’s flaws can be largely ignored by the time it builds to the big showdown between Buckley and Colman—where acclaimed performers who seem to be having the time of their lives hurl unprintable words at each other, all while dolled up in garb that's more appropriate for Masterpiece Theatre. While, as of its TIFF debut, Wicked Little Letters doesn't have U.S. distribution,this storyit should appeal to viewers who wish that their BritBox programming occasionally got a little raunchy—and anyone who can't help but love watching Colman and Buckley do their thing.