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Now Playing: ‘Wicker’ weaves a wonderfully weird tale of romance

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The premise is absurd. The sex can be quite frank, and the ending is literally thorny. Thankfully, there aren’t many movies quite like this one playing in theaters right now, and we should be grateful. I’m glad we still get weird adult-oriented fairy tales like Wicker, a film that mixes magic, kink, and comedy, to craft a romance that’s also a stinging critique of the whole institution of marriage.

[imbd.com]
Here, we follow a lonely fisherwoman (an always engaging Olivia Coleman) in a conservative seaside village who commissions a local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage, who steals every scene he is in) to weave her a male companion out of wicker. When he does, the wicker man (Alexander Skarsgård) forms a tender yet unconventional relationship with Coleman’s fisherwoman. I know that premise sounds absurd, but what starts out as a strange sexual relationship gradually grows into genuine love. Soon this unconventional romance sparks intense jealousy and chaos among her traditional community.

The first question you may ask yourself is, can I feel for a character made entirely of wicker? The answer for me was, yes. Skarsgård brings a quiet, magnetic grace to a character who is literally a woven creation. Despite being glued into prosthetics and a rigid frame for hours a day, he managed to modulate his movements from “stiff wicker” to a soft, fluid, human-like presence.

First off, I like the film’s offbeat tone. I don’t feel the film is meant to be taken seriously. Still, it uses a medieval coastal village setting to explore loneliness, female autonomy, and jealousy, with a subversive, bawdy tone that blends offbeat satire with genuine emotional warmth. Skillfully blending magic and fantasy with more modern sensibilities about female agency, Wicker isn’t meant to be taken entirely seriously, but the film still manages to be sincere.

Plus, I appreciated how the small fishing village is filled with memorable characters. Characters in the town are identified by their professions (such as the Tailor or the Baker), while women are stripped of independent titles and defined purely by their spouses (such as the Tailor’s Wife or the Baker’s Wife). Specifically, I dig how the film uses the townsfolk’s fear of the wicker man to poke fun at conformity. Here, marriage is a repressive, patriarchal transaction rather than a union of love. As a result of the town’s repressed nature, Coleman’s sexual pleasure becomes a threat to the power structure of the village. This movie illustrates that a woman’s happiness can threaten a patriarchal power structure.

Of course, I can’t leave out Olivia Coleman. She conveys both raw humor and deep vulnerability as a woman unsure whether her wicker companion genuinely loves her.
★ ★ ★½