Wicker
Trailers being misleading can be a blessing or a curse. When you cut a trailer, your goal is to lure the audience in, but sometimes, you also want to keep an air of uncertainty about what the film is, as well. Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s “Wicker” is an intriguing example of this. On the one hand, the trailers showing off some horniness in the premise of Olivia Colman’s Fisherwoman having sex with Alexander Skarsgård’s character, who is made of wicker, made for some hilarious jokes online, and a new kink unlocked. And yet, Fischer and Wilson’s film doesn’t just play off of the fun of that premise, and has the intelligence to take Ursula Wills’s short story in a thoughtful, but still darkly funny, direction.
The film is framed as a folk tale, with different acts as the story progresses, and “Wicker” works best as folklore, or a legend. Why does Colman’s Fisherwoman go to the village’s Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) for her Wicker Husband? She doesn’t necessarily seem to be alone- which is to say, she seems content in life- but because she’s older and unmarried, she is viewed as lesser by the men (and women) in the community. We see a couple of weddings throughout, and they are baudy and also seem like men want to marry women not for love but lust. We see the Basketmaker begin the process of creating the Wicker Husband, but we do not see the process in which he imbues it with life. But as we meet the Wicker Husband in preparation for his nuptials, the curiosity of the town is piqued. They eschew some of the traditions of the village’s ceremony, and their first night as Wicker Man and wife is…something. As we see them, we see that the Husband is thoughtful, and looks to make life easier for the Fisherwoman. The bond they have goes from a grotesque curiosity for the village to something that upends how people view relationships.
There is a twist in “Wicker” that really builds to how the third act plays out. There is actually a situation that leads into the twist where one of the men in the village is inspired by the Wicker Husband’s actions, which inspires his wife’s decision that leads to the complications of the third act. It’s a weird, but emotionally understandable choice that one of the leading women in the village (Elizabeth Debicki) uses to destroy the Fisherwoman. And yet, real love cannot be stopped. The final lesson plays out with the Basketmaker’s final creation, and “Wicker” gives us a beguiling, sweet ending through how bizarre it is. This film understands that the happy ending matters.
