What do you do when you want to weave yourself a new reality to escape the one you no longer want? In Wicker, a fabulist feature written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, you visit the village weaver who holds hitherto unknown magic in his craft.
Based on the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills, Wicker depicts a dynamic we all recognize–it typically starts on the playground and often continues on without ever growing up: Who’s in, who’s out and what primitive instincts devolve to when there is no genuine morality to center a people.
The story’s setting is stylized to reflect a medieval village surrounded by all the charm of uncorrupted nature yet grim at its core. Add in heavy dashes of humor and darkly bawdy themes, and you’re off for a delightful, and sometimes disturbing, romp.
Olivia Colman stars as the village fisherwoman, orphaned early in life, now middle aged, and stinky by profession. Often mocked by her neighbors who reflexively demean her, her life is lonely but she has her freedom–unlike the married women who are literally collared by the patriarchy.
At a village wedding she is the unwitting recipient of a woven egg marking her as the next bride-to-be, much to the bemusement of the guests. Determined to have a groom of some kind to stand by her in church, she turns to the local basket weaver to make her a husband. Played by a soliloquizing Peter Dinklage, the weaver has greater powers than realized, and she finds herself possessed of a loving, devoted, and archly passionate wicker husband, played by an ardent Alexander Skarsgård, whose dedication and tenderness sets the village women ablaze with fantasy–and the village men simmering with jealousy.
What follows is archetypal and, therefore, somewhat predictable in paradigm. But what delights is how the typical themes of scapegoating and misunderstanding unfold, all created by deliberate machinations of envious people undone by the spectacle of authentic love. Think Iago and Othello disguised in comedic garb. The Iago of Wicker is the beautiful and seemingly high-status, but frustrated, Tailor’s wife, played by Elizabeth Debicki, who you may remember as Princess Diana in the Crown. She’s a beautiful and conniving bully whose subtle domination of female village life is about to be turned on its head.
At heart this is a romantic dark-comedy, and therefore the surprise ending that reveals the villagers to themselves invites a layered response. For audience members who are tired of bullies and enjoy a bit of naughtiness, this movie will offer much to enjoy as you drop into the alternative worlds that only story can achieve.
For KSQD’s Film Gang: Christine Barrington