Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 41 minutes, Directors – Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson
An ostracized fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) has a husband (Alexander Skarsgård) out of wicker, which quickly unsettles the balance and traditions of the local village.
Wicker sits in a series of ‘not quites’. It’s not quite an off-kilter comedy and it’s not quite mainstream. It’s not quite a fairy tale or fable but it’s also not quite a raunchy rom-com. Yet, it is an interesting oddity.
Olivia Colman plays a fisherwoman living just outside a village placed at some point in folkloric history. Mocked when walking through the streets for her look and smell, even more so when wedding celebrations are taking place outside, her ostracized and lonely lifestyle proves enough and so she commissions the local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage – delivering monologues that feel strikingly out-of-place with the rest of the dialogue, as if the film takes a tangent each time in his workshop to step into the kind of ‘thinkng aloud’ pondering that works largely in a book, or a play.
The Basketmaker (everyone is named after their role) takes a month to create a tall Wicker Husband (taking the form of Alexander Skarsgård, with some brilliant work from the make-up department, whose efforts with the details of the rest of the cast shouldn’t be dismissed, either), who soon causes a stir in the village. His devotion to Fisherwoman, both romantically and sexually, upsets the traditions of a community where the custom at weddings is for the groom to put a tight-fitting collar round the neck of his bride. No one else is more put off by this than the upstanding figure of authority The Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki doing some fine nose-looking-down).
Throughout the quirks and oddities come through, but they don’t quite feel strong enough to make this a completely strange film, or for the central conceit to feel fully seized. There are glimpses of fairy tale aspects but not quite enough to make full use of them for aesthetic. Details are largely used for humour, although the joke is soon turned around so it’s about the failings of the men in the community and how the Wicker Husband shows them up, again shifting the balances and views in the area.
There are a handful of chuckles here and there, and the film generally moves along well enough with interest in the developing relationship as jealousies crop up in multiple places, including from Fisherwoman to the attention her specially-crafted husband is gaining from the other women. There’s a handful of strands that crop up as part of this, grouped together by the central idea and themes of the film, and some can feel a bit more familiar than others – although largely in the case of individual scenes revolving around the men in a community talking over a pint. Yet, there’s still a sense of amusement to be found at times, largely thanks to Skarsgård’s performance as the Wicker Husband finds confusion in the village around him, how can the men not understand that his wife being happy makes him happy?
There’s amusement and an overall likable nature to Wicker and how it unfolds, helped by two leads who you almost wish you could just spend the 101-minutes solely in the company of, capturing a longing in both the characters amongst the amusement, and initial set of sex scenes, of the film and their relationship. It’s another aspect that I sat wishing the film would just let out a little bit more but feels somewhat dampened by the surrounding ideas and characters. I just generally wished that, although the film overall is a good piece of work, that it did more with what it had and was willing to turn up the dial to be just a bit stranger and embrace the wicker man with the love of Olivia Colman and fervour of Christopher Lee.
There’s a good, amusing film within Wicker which holds a good few chuckles and two lead performances, one brilliantly brought to life through the believably detailed make-up, that bring out the more emotional aspects, it just feels as if it could do more with its fairy tale stylings and stranger aspects.
