Anyone who has seen the trailer for Wicker will rightly think that it could be one of the oddest films out this year. A 2-minute hint of a film featuring a man made from wood breaking the bed in wild wood-on-human sex scenes with Olivia Colman will do that to a movie goer.
Local loner Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) – all character’s names are simply their trade – wanders through the local village day after day selling her latest catch. She is the butt of all the villager’s jokes – you can smell her coming, who on earth would want to marry her – but carries on regardless, dejectedly joining in with self-deprecating smiles before returning to her lonely cottage every evening on the outskirts of town. In a bizarre equivalent of catching the bouquet during a local wedding, she accidently becomes the next bride to be, so decides to visit weaving expert and local wicker Pygmalion, The Basket Maker (Peter Dinklage), asking him to make her a new husband out of wood. When the wicker man (Alexander Skarsgård) arrives a month later, he turns out to be the perfect husband; completely dedicated to his wife, a wonderful lover and spends all day tirelessly fixing their home and doing all the housework. The local villager’s initial scepticism and derision very quickly turns into jealously and annoyance; the women all realising how rubbish their own husbands are, and the men narked at being shown up as such.
Going in expecting an incredibly weird sexually fused fairytale, the real oddity of Wicker is how quickly it becomes anything but odd. After spending 10 minutes in the company of Colman and Skarsgård, you very quickly forget the latter is made of wicker. In fact, for the vast majority of the film, you could easily swap out a wicker husband for a human one. The main narrative of the film is everyday human reactions and emotions; jealously, love, envy, hatred, manipulation, disappointment and self-worth. It is an incredibly powerful human story that just happens to have a man made from wood in it.
Colman is a fabulously emotional actor and has an innate ability to display inner sadness while outwardly showing happiness. You instantly create a bond and genuinely want a happy outcome for her. Dinklage seems to be having the time of his life, wandering around his workshop loudly philosophising about his place in life and the values of humanity. The rest of the cast are fantastically chosen; Elizabeth Debicki as the Taylor’s Wife (or The Doctor’s Daughter) is beautifully manipulative, Kiell Smith-Bynoe’s slowly emotionally disintegrating Inn Keeper, Phil Daniels fabulously alcoholic Butcher and even a scene stealing cameo from Richard E Grant as the Doctor.
It is worth mentioning just how good the effects are here. The fact you can easily forget that Skarsgård is made of wicker is testament to how seamless the creation is, but also at certain points daylight flickers through his primarily empty body. It’s an incredible mix of creativity and subtlety.
Wicker is not the film you expect. It is weird yes, but it is much more concerned with studying people’s neuroses and small-town emotional witch-hunts, while still managing to keep the laughs flowing and showing a remarkable level of sensitivity to what it means to be human.
Wicker is out now at cinemas.
Review by Colin Lomas
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