There’s no denying the marvellous technical skill in Wicker, or the film’s commitment to obscenity. But it dilutes its strengths with passive protagonists, and storytelling as flaunting as it is meandering.
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker has all the ingredients for a stirring contemporary fable. Its period setting and observations on love and ostracism wouldn’t be out of place in the Brothers Grimm volumes. Mixing it with world-weary humour, unafraid to be dark or absurd, is a suitable attempt to add a modernist bite. But the picture sadly loses sight of its idiosyncratic romance in favour of overbearing handholding.
Based on The Wicker Husband, a short story by Ursula Wills, the picture is an overt allegory for patriarchy and societal constructs. None of the characters is named: men are referred to by occupations, and women are named in connection to the men in their lives – Tailor’s Wife, Doctor’s Daughter, Bottlewasher’s Widow, etc. It’s an intriguing way of highlighting how partnership was, and sometimes still is, eschewed for possession, breeding resentment rather than love. The women are bitter at their lack of agency, and the men are vapid neanderthals as hapless as they are horny.
Defying this naming convention is The Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), a dreary middle-aged spinster subject to much ridicule, led primarily by The Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki). We see this firsthand as she sells fish across her medieval village, where a barrage of backhanded compliments and thinly veiled mockery compounds her loneliness. The one person who shows her kindness is the Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage), a similarly marginalised man who turns wicker weaving into a fine art. Tired of scorn and seclusion, the Fisherwoman approaches the Basketmaker and asks him to make her a husband.
Craftsmanship is this film’s most glowing attribute. The creation of the medieval setting is stellar in its detailed authenticity. The rugged costume design; the rough textures of the production design; the earthy barrenness of the settlement – all of it seems deliberately drained of colour to highlight the misery in the air, be it The Fisherwoman’s isolation or the ways she’s used as an outlet for the village’s own insecurities. There’s a vulgarity to it that twins alongside the raunchy humour, an oddness that extends to all the mise-en-scene, right down to the character designs – the beard given to The Innkeeper (a cheeky Kiell Smith-Bynoe) is so bizarre it achieves a morbid majesty.
When the Basketmaker presents the Fisherwoman with a sentient man made of wicker (Alexander Skarsgård), it’s hard not to be mesmerised. Utilising a custom suit and practical effects, with minimal CGI, the results are astoundingly lifelike. The patches of see-through wicker bindings and crisp sound design add enchanting humanity to The Wicker Husband. It’s an Oscar-worthy use of makeup and prosthetics which, in narrative, quickly becomes the talk of the village; not least because the Wicker husband’s infatuation for the Fisherwoman appears genuine opposite the brutish lust of the men and romantic dissatisfaction of the women.
Sadly, Wicker becomes less and less interested in its leads as it runs its course. The conflict that emerges from their union makes sense, but the film forgets to include them in much of the fighting, rendering them so passive that they are effectively absent at the crisis point. The Fisherwoman and Wicker Husband’s marriage may be the inciting incident, but the story largely happens to them rather than being driven by them.
The focal point is the village women’s jealousy, with the Tailor’s Wife spreading malicious lies about the Wicker Husband’s conduct to try to drive them apart. The film is critical of how patriarchy can turn something as beautiful as romance into entitlement, and of the women’s envy born from their lack of fulfilment in their marriages to brutes and nincompoops. Instead of wedding rings, women are given bulky collars worthy of a BDSM fantasy – an overt reference to the entrapping feeling of ownership that patriarchy can create. But the film focuses so much on the antagonists’ spite that The Fisherwoman and The Wicker Husband’s dynamic is relegated to the background, their brief moments of dispute feeling rote and routine.
Their love is heartwarming in its purity, ironic given the carnality of their sex scenes. The Wicker Husband’s innocence is brought to life by a charming Skarsgård, but it’s contrasted with a raunchy tone that tries to give the narrative and genre subversive weight. Everyone is put under the film’s ire, their vices, born from dissatisfying romances, being viciously scrutinised. Sadly, it’s more strange than funny, with punchlines and themes so self-aware they carry a vaunting edge. There’s one shockingly bleak joke where a character unceremoniously dies that, in fairness, got a genuine belly laugh out of this critic. However, the hit-and-miss humour generally undercuts the thematic substance rather than amplifying it.
Once the third act arrives, it’s more The Basketmaker’s story than The Fisherwoman’s, as he decides to put the rotten townsfolk in their place. The cast is broadly game for the picture’s peculiar nature, but Dinklage’s role seems to be a mouthpiece for the lessons of acceptance and romance. He speaks, usually to himself, in whimsical monologues that ground the themes with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and serve the predictable storyline. He’s as self-congratulatory as the film at its worst moments, his sudden agency in the third act becoming the final stitch in the wonky basket. It’s a film about loneliness and true happiness, but it too often gets distracted by secondary plotlines and characters, leading to frustration and even tedium.
One wants to like Wicker more than they ultimately did. There’s no denying the marvellous technical skill, or the film’s commitment to obscenity. But it dilutes its strengths with passive protagonists, and storytelling as flaunting as it is meandering. It’s a disappointing outcome for such an interesting premise, but too little focus on those causing said premise undermines its otherwise rich themes. Like the titular entity, it sparks conversation, but it’s hollower than it looks.
Wicker is playing in cinemas nationwide from October 30.
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