On the outskirts of a village by the sea, lives a Fisherwoman; smelly, single, and perpetually ridiculed. One day, fed up with her stuffy, small-minded neighbours, she commissions herself a husband to be made from wicker. In an otherwise conservative town, this unconventional romance sparks outrage, jealousy and chaos.

The Garden Cinema View:

If you liked his emotionally distant leather-clad biker in Pillion, you’re going to love Alexander Skarsgård as an extremely attentive wicker man…

Co-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson breathe life into this Pygmalion-type fairy tale; a quirky, comedically broad critique of gender roles, small-town jealousy, and ageism. Where Wicker excels is in its world building. Production designer Renátó Cseh and cinematographer Lol Crawley create a fully realised space for this odd community, featuring a mud-caked village and the Fisherwoman’s (Olivia Colman) witchy cottage on the edge of town. The Wicker Husband himself is a compelling and (very) tactile creation – a triumph in prosthetics and makeup by Wētā Workshop. Skarsgård’s movement and softly spoken interactions with the grotesques of the village are among Wicker’s most interesting scenes. Huston Fischer and Wilson lend this non-specific time and place its own cosmology of folk rituals, customs, and speech – resulting in a folk-horror-comedy sensibility that is both distinct but recognisable.

The jokes are somewhat uneven, but Wicker is still thoroughly enjoyable – although it may leave you wondering what a darker and stranger take on this tale might have looked like…  

Cast:
Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki