I’ll admit, I did brush off Wicker as indie drivel. On paper this is some late night pot smoking dorm room inspiration of a story, and can go wrong in so many manipulative cuetsy ways. Fortunately, Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson sobered up after they came up with the idea, and thought it through in fun, enjoyable, sometimes wickedly funny ways.
The world of Wicker is where no one has names, except their job titles. For example, there’s a Tailor (Nabhaan Rizwan), and then, a Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), and sadly sometimes, the Tailor’s Wife’s Sister (Marli Silu). The bottom of the barrel though here is the Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), a dirty smelly single woman living alone and making a living by selling fish at the market. After a wedding, the Fisherwoman grows tired of the jabs at her spinstery lifestyle, so she asks the Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband. He says show up at the church in a month, where the Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgard) shows up, loving and caring. Naturally, this has, um, drastic consequences on the men and women in the community, apparently unaware this is what a marriage is supposed to be like.
Fischer and Wilson basically make Alexander Skarsgard the manic wicker dream man, and work backwards from there. He’s everything you’d want in a man, except the flammable part. All his dialogue is wonderfully saccharine, honest, and simple. That makes conversations with Olivia Colman and the townspeople hysterical, like when he describes word for word the appalling pub conversation to Colman, which he doesn’t fully understand but she does. Or when he’s perplexed why other husbands don’t love their wives, and they instantaneously break down their defenses and start crying for a brief moment, to eventually snap back into place. While the gimmick is a Wicker Husband, Fischer and Wilson essentially turn him into a mirror on the townspeople, the audience, and society itself. All of this is done with a matter of fact whimsy that works magnificently, like watching the Baker (Ben Ashenden) and Baker’s Wife (Ella Bruccoleri) learn through the Wicker Man that they like role playing in the bedroom. Or Elizabeth Debicki having a blast playing a bitchy medieval version of a mean girl.
But the movie ultimately works if you believe in Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgard’s partnership. Skarsgard has a blast here, using that incredible wicker costume and sound design to give him carte blanche to immerse into this role. He can be stoic and warmly stiff so Olivia Colman can bring everything else. The great actress proves again why she’s been one of the best for a while now, using that potent mixture of dashing sense of humor hiding a very mean, self-loathing menace underneath. Colman walks this tricky line of having to carry the emotional weight of the film but not make the conflict so cruel we question the pairing and the house of cards comes tumbling down. There’s some flirting with the line, but Colman always ends up back on the right side, so by the end we stop seeing weird Wicker Skarsgard f*cking Olivia Colman and just see a loving married couple who make each other better.
I concur with Ella Bruccoleri. Even I would climb Wicker Alexander Skarsgard, the perfect husband. You know, aside from the flammable part. I will say, that joke in the movie never gets old, with Skarsgard’s nonplussed delivery of “I burn very easily” working every time for me. That, and Marli Silu being in a movie. Please keep casting her y’all, her stuff rocks!