Wicker

Shake an Egg

It’s been quite the year for high-concept, high-quirk movies. Digger stands at the top of the list. By far. (Digger Nation unite!) But there are others. Rather like One Night Only, Wicker sounds like a really bad, disagreeable idea.

But hold on. Wicker turns into quite a smart morality play based on the “fable” The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills; it’s a short story of a couple dozen pages. What’s more curious, this strange romance seems to keep seeding new ground. It was also turned into a musical in 2020 in Newbury, United Kingdom.

Much like One Night Only, it’s a movie that packs a whole lot of heart for its lead characters. As crazy it all sounds, as ridiculous as the circumstances get – which extends out to a wicker baby and a wicker wife – there’s a point to it all. A sharp point.

So very fitting.

Simply put, Wicker is about a fisherwoman who gets the wood she’s been longing for all her long, lonely life. Her story is briskly paced. Within 20 minutes of movie time, the fisherwoman asks the village master basket maker to make a husband for her and – badda-bing, badda-umm-bam – one month later she’s given a man made of wicker.

Consider it the ultimate consolation prize. In one of the movie’s many off-kilter ideas reeking of double entendres or mirthful symbolism, she is the recipient of the equivalent to a wedding garter. She’s the one who shakes an egg that – in a twist on gender identity parties – determines she’ll be the next to have a baby. Her egg releases a powdery, dusty cloud of purple while the other – much younger – women all suffer the disappointment of yellow powdery clouds.

The time and place aren’t called out specifically. So, let’s just say it’ll be hard to look at renaissance festivals the same way ever again. Talk about a strange, twisted twist on The Princess Bride. Phew. There’s no magic. No spells cast. No lightning. Not a rumble of thunder. Or even a turkey thigh. But the movie still casts its own spell as this crazy tale unfolds with a generous amount of wit. Wit and loads of inuendo.

This is a movie with a cast stacked with big names, but none of the village characters they portray have proper names. They all simply go by their village function.

So it is the basket maker (Peter Dinklage) sets out on his new commission from the fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) with the intent of creating a man who is also the perfect being (Alexander Skarsgard). The basket maker can make the man, but it’ll be up to the man to choose his own personality.

Basket Case

Needless to say, when the old hag of a fisherwoman starts to strut around town with her well-dressed wicker man, the other ladies get jealous. Quickly. Fiercely.

The newlyweds experience a fantastic love life. It’s loud. So loud, one simple village woman wonders if somebody’s being murdered. Their bed breaks repeatedly. He fixes it. He also mends the leaky roof. He becomes a master fisherman.

He does it all.

He even holds conversations with his wife. (Gasp!)

Count the tailor’s wife (Elizabeth Debicki) among those both aroused and troubled by the man made of wicker. In one of the movie’s punches at sexism, she expresses a desire to do tailoring work with her husband (yeah, the village tailor). But he sees her as the mother of his children, the homemaker and nothing more. So she struts around doing her thing in the village, which is to seed conspiracies and trouble.

The relationship between fisherwoman and wicker man sews… err… sows discord in the village.

The men are as annoyed by the wicker man as the women are captivated.

And the fisherwoman starts looking younger, refreshed.

At least in pretense, it’s a religious village. It’s the kind of silly pretense in which the preacher advises, “Not to do the baddish thing. To do the goodish thing is good.” Wedding ceremonies take on all sorts of symbolism – a clear thematic element throughout the movie – as such, instead of a ringbearer, there’s a collar bearer. The lucky bride now sports a hefty metal “matrimonial collar” carefully placed over and secured around her bridal veil.

Man on Fire

It all sounds so unlikely, not just in terms of the storyline. The talent behind this production is remarkable.

Olivia Colman, a three-time Oscar nominee and Best Actress winner for The Favourite, is a co-producer alongside co-star Skarsgard and a conspicuous couple-dozen or so other producers. They’re joined by Dinklage, Debicki and Oscar nominee Richard E. Grant.

It’s an impressive assembly in front of the camera, all directed by a co-writing and co-directing pair, Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (a real-life husband and wife team), whose sole previous feature film was the 2020 sci-fi comedy Save Yourselves! This is certainly the kind of production that’ll strengthen their roots in the film business.

As Skarsgard’s follow-up to Pillion, maybe some had certain expectations of eroticism. That’s hardly the case here. It’s a comedy first and foremost; everything else is secondary.

Skarsgard’s performance as the man of wicker is all the more remarkable thanks to the fine folks at SPFX house Weta, which used some innovative know-how and green sleeves to turn Skarsgard into a wholly holey man. At one point, he holds his hand up to the sun, examining the remnants of a nail incident. The sun shines through, gleaming between his open… um… pores.