Cap off your summer under the stars with a symphonic cacophony of the choicest British curses ever to be uttered. Like this, for instance:
“You foxy-arse old fucking mare, you want spiking in the nose, you big smelly bitch!”
Or this choice bit of vulgar impropriety:
“You great big fucking onion!”
For those who love salt sprinkled on their common vernacular, you must stream Amazon Prime’s ribald comedy Weird Little Letters, starring brilliant Academy Award–winner Olivia Colman, who plays the feckless recipient of filthy missives lambasting her pleasure-sensitive private body parts. If you don’t get the picture, watch the trailer below for a saucy sampling of these anonymous poison pen notes that are scandalizing suffragette-era England.
Colman’s character Edith Swann is a spinster cowering under the control of her Christian parents. Edith is forced to write Bible verses over and over when she does something her strict father doesn’t favor. Then, the free-spirited Rose, an Irish war widow (Jessie Buckley), moves next door with a live-in boyfriend (Malachi Kirby) and a precocious daughter (Alisha Weir). Rose is no grieving soul. She curses interminably, drinks with men and has sex loud enough for the neighbors to hear. In the film, Edith is shocked by Rose and accuses her of writing the letters, while simultaneously admiring and being jealous of her free spirit.
The crux of this must-see summer comedy/mystery is ultimately to find the culprit and their reason for writing a letter a day—ultimately to everyone in town.
The film’s colorful language is matched only by its color-coordinated set decoration, which enhances the realism of this working-class English recreation. Colman is hilarious in her religious-inspired ribald bawdiness. Oh, and if you admire fountain pen script (which is the real star, if you ask me), the filming of the letters being written is what we might call an organ-engorging ecstatic pleasure.