Despite seeming like a raunchfest, Wicker is a surprisingly sweet outing about love and patriarchal views. I can’t believe it either writes Carter Smith
Behind every great woman is, unfortunately, more often than not, a deadbeat, lazy man. It’s with this sentiment that Elenor Wilson and Alex Hunston Fisher’s Wicker shines. What seems, on the surface, like a raunchy flick is actually a sweet story about finding the love you deserve, not the one society says you do.
We are placed in a small village by the sea. The husband works, the wives stay at home, and young girls are being shipped off to the nearest sleazy man to fulfil their duties as a woman. As it goes, a bad place to be. Picture the Kendom from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, just without the plastic and set many years in the past. Lowest on the village’s pecking order is Fisherwoman (Olivia Coleman). She smells like fish, is painfully single and takes the jibes from the village wives – led by Elizabeth Debicki’s fantastic Tailor’s Wife – about her lifestyle like a champ.
That is until one day, after some on-the-nose but funny wedding traditions, she has had enough of their remarks.Fisherwoman takes herself down to Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) and asks for a husband.
Then comes the big selling point – Alexander Skarsgård hunky Wickerman. He is everything the husbands in this village are not; he actually likes his wife, is polite and great in bed. It’s a real head-scratcher for the husbands who are bewildered at the fact he doesn’t treat Fisherwomen as a maid.
Up until this point, Wicker plays out how you’d expect from the trailers. There’s an overuse of crude jokes you’d expect from a high schooler and a whole lot of sex.
After Wickerman has been integrated into the town, Wilson and Fischer start to have fun. Their bizarre romance causes heaps of jealousy and chaos, which slowly spirals into a comical madness. It’s the perfect weaving of true sincerity and quirky sensual fantasy.
It’s hardly subtle in its commentary – after all, the characters are named after their jobs or their husbands’ jobs – but a literal Wickerman is walking around, so it would have been silly to do so.
There are a great sum of wacky sequences and some laugh-out-loud moments. Unsurprisingly, most come from Coleman, who, although not too dissimilar to her role in Wicked Little Letter, is a riot.
It is quite staggering that this film works as well as it does. Don’t settle for less; Mr Wicker is out there somewhere for all of you.
- Wicker releases into cinemas on November 27th
