The film stars Kristen Wiig, Hailee Steinfeld, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Nolte.

Johanna writes a response letter and Sabitha's friend Edith offers to take it to the post office and mail it.

Instead, she intercepts the letter and, as a cruel joke, the two teenagers forge a love note from Ken, addressed to Johanna.

The site's critics consensus reads, "Kristen Wiig's vibrant performance is almost worth the price of admission -- and it has to be, because Hateship Loveship doesn't have much else going for it.

[10] In contrast, Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly praised the cast, but said the film is "too painful to be uplifting, too private to explore what was clearly child abuse".

[13][14][15][10] Hornaday wrote Wiig's "cipherlike impassivity at first threatens to make 'Hateship Loveship' fatally inert, but then begins to pay off as the film heads to one of the more startling third acts in recent memory.

"[9] She added "we’ve never seen a protagonist quite like Johanna, who on the one hand personifies female self-abnegation at its most domesticated, but on the other embodies the sheer will at its most stubborn.