None of the couples are truly in love in co-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s adaptation of Ursula Wills short fable, The Wicker Husband. It is medieval times and the population are held prisoner to social convention and the hallowed institute of marriage where women are literally placed in a collar like a dog on their wedding day and damned to servitude. When a single woman asks a basket weaver to make her a husband out of wicker, the human couples get jealous and question their life choices. In the age of chatbot romances and computer-generated desire this high concept comedy about companionship, romantic bonding and sexual fulfilment amusingly strikes pertinent notes as it examines the toxic ties of matrimony. It’s all served up with saucy humour and an unholy helping of double entendres.
This cautionary tale has much in common thematically with romantic sci-fi films such as Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man and Steve Barron’s Electric Dreams as it deconstructs delusions about love. Yet its magical fairy-tale elements set it apart as the scarecrow-like figure at the centre of it all is given a brain, and to be blunt and shallow about it, the body (albeit under prosthetics), eyes and voice of Alexander Skarsgård who charms the pants off Olivia Colman’s Fisherwoman. In that sense, sparks fly between the two in an alluring and poignant manner that brings to mind Spike Jonze’s Her with Colman and Skarsgård delivering genuine pathos through their performances. The comedy may be one note but the two actors fully commit to both the humour and the dramatic elements of their roles.
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The supporting cast are made up of a mixture of well-known British comedic talent including Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Nabhaan Rizwan, British icon Phil Daniels and acclaimed actors Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant and Peter Dinklage who is given some of the funniest one-liners. Debicki excels as that girl who acted like Angelica from Rugrats when she was little and is now giving off side-eye stares, jealousy and repression while Dinklage revels in Shakespearean style soliloquies.
Wētā are in charge of the look and design of the wicker husband, and thankfully it is not the stuff of nightmares or the deeply unsexy transformation of Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero in Wicked: For Good. The workshop created a fabricated suit and facial prosthetic makeup for Skarsgård and they are seriously impressive practical effects. They are also used brilliantly for another creation further along in the narrative with a dark twist which stays true to the original text.
Wilson and Fisher have fleshed out the material with a greater emphasis on the emotional confusion and joy between the couple at the centre of the film. Colman’s character who is simply described as “the ugly, dumpy girl” is also afforded more of a personality as a stubborn outlier. In a film about shaking up the status quo when it comes to heterosexual relationships Wicker doesn’t quite match the feminist intellect and febrile imagination of Angela Carter’s subversive fairy-tales but it is quick-witted enough to be entertaining.
