Drink? Olivia Colman would.
Photo: Black Bear/Everett Collection
Desire has the power to destroy us. This strips us bare to the posts. It reveals what motivates us, what delights us and teaches how to let passion guide us. Wicker — directed by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer from a short story written by Ursula Willis — is at its best when describing the power of desire, whether desired or granted, to piece together our understanding of ourselves and our communities. The parts of the film that rely on the romance and sensuality of its premise are truly charming. When he gets distracted by lesser narrative matters, the heat dissipates.
Like all great fairy tales, the film’s time period and setting are loose enough to give its lessons a universal quality. Wicker opens with a voiceover from Peter Dinklage, who plays the Basketmaker. (All the characters in the film are named after their vocation or their relationship to a man in a notable profession.) “I once heard of a fish in the Arctic Sea,” he said, “that was reflected in the ice above. » As her voice sparkles with curiosity, the camera watches the rituals of the fisherwoman (Olivia Colman): she cleans and disembowels the day’s catch, and ignores her reflection in the muddy water of her bucket. “At first he attacked his reflection… Then he got jealous of its glistening scales. Then he tried to fuck himself. Then he died. Safer not to see your fish self at all.” In this last line, there is a detectable sense of disquiet regarding self-discovery.
The Fisherwoman’s life is made up of uninterrupted routines: Fishing. Piss in a bucket. Fall asleep by the fire. All alone, brutally. She lives, understandably, far from the center of the small town in which she sells her wares. As she limps through the village offering fish, she encounters the cruel words and sneers of the townspeople: “We feel that you are coming! or “Hello, old girl.” The Fisherwoman, played by Colman with thrilling banter, responds to the disrespectful remarks. “Lick my worm” is remarkable.
Presented with an earthy color palette and a jaunty, string-heavy score, Wicker has in mind the nature of how women are treated in a culture in which marriage, children, and household chores are where they are expected to find their value. His points are rudimentary but well stated. The Fisherwoman is a woman without relatives because, as she explains to the creation who becomes her husband, her father died in an accident when she was younger and her mother committed suicide following this loss. This leaves her being treated like an outcast.
There is brambleness in the depiction of the fisherwoman’s place in this society and the way other women like to remind her of her place: as an outcast, a lonely joke. But these townspeople – whether the undersexual baker (Ella Bruccoleri) or the hurried and cruel tailor’s wife (a delightfully scheming Elizabeth Debicki) – are deeply unhappy with their own lot in life. To be a wife in this world is to be dissatisfied with one’s sacrifices but unable or unwilling to choose otherwise for oneself. Just listen to the way these women advise the tailor’s wife’s sister: men are supposed to be led and guided, fed and fucked, but nowhere in the way marriage is arranged is pleasure or respect part of that balance for the woman.
It is these swirling forces of loneliness and occasional cruelty that lead the fisherwoman to make an unusual request of the basket maker: “I want you to make me a husband.” » Shock briefly marks his face before he collects his payment and replies: “See you at the chapel in a month.” The film takes care to present the artistic philosophies of the Basket Maker. He considers that helping the fisherwoman is a righteous task; he creates an “elegant container” whose “character will belong to him”. The union between the Fisherwoman and the wicker that will become a man serves as an argument: love is a risk, a risk that can reveal parts of yourself that surprise you. But whatever your love is, it should make your life better.
When the resulting creation, Alexander Skarsgård as the Wicker Husband, comes on stage, the film also comes to life. We can rejoice in the stunned reactions of the townspeople when the wicker husband asks the tailor for a suit and shoes from the shoemaker. We finally have see it in all its splendor, waiting at the chapel when the fisherwoman enters, holding white flowers tight to her breast. Imposing in size and made almost entirely of wicker, he is kind and engaged in a way that immediately sets him apart from the blithely indifferent men of the town.
It was after this union that Wicker enters his best sequences. Skarsgård plays the wicker husband with an effective and gentle way of speaking. Every word and every breath has such a luxurious weight that it lends a ravishing quality to lines like “You are the reason I live and breathe.” Very early on, he responds to her initial discomfort in her presence with a compliment that sounds divine and the purpose of a prayer: “I was made to be with you.” As they become more comfortable with each other, the wicker husband reveals himself to be strong, sturdy, gentle, and a little weird in a way that complements the fisherman.
It helps that he is remarkably sensitive to her physical pleasure. He can throw her around, change positions with ease, and send the fisherman into screaming orgasms that shock city dwellers trying to sleep at home. The sex scenes aren’t explicit, but they have a charm born of the chemistry Skarsgård and Colman share. Every time the wicker husband moves, you can hear the tightening and stretching of the wood that makes up his body, including when he gets hard for the first time with the fisherman. The actors easily sell the idea that these characters are immersed in the authentic pleasures of mutual respect and desire.
This creates a stark contrast between their happiness and the marital chores endured by the townspeople. Their great love is confusing for the spectators. When asked in a bar why he repairs the Fisherwoman’s roof, door and bed, the wicker husband responds with a simple truth: “It makes her happy. Then I’m happy. Then the bed has to be repaired.” How wonderful.
The performances of Colman, Skarsgård and Debicki are remarkable, and Richard E. Grant is very engaging with his brief appearance as the terrible town doctor. It’s rare to see an older woman’s sexuality and interiority explored with authenticity and care, and it is through Colman’s performance that the most intriguing thematic threads of Wicker Get your act together: what is the price of being a woman who refuses to make herself small in a world that relies on the subjugation of women? How does loneliness become self-destructive armor? How can love and passion transform us?
Before the film’s release, the marketing team behind Wicker (which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January) has already made audiences frothy by presenting it as a totally exciting and strange fairytale fantasy. At a time when porn, about romantic monsters and other fantasies, attracts a wide audience and A passionate rivalry has made viewers want more romance, Wicker has impeccable timing. So it’s frustrating that the film focuses on sex before focusing elsewhere. I regret to inform you that Wicker is nowhere near as excited as she should be.
As the film reaches its halfway point, the filmmakers’ focus shifts away from the details of the central relationship and toward its impact on the townspeople: how this torrid love affair ripples through their psyches and causes them to question the way they live their lives. To the people of this small, malicious community, men aren’t supposed to behave like the wicker husband: committed, caring, lustful, and good-natured. Women, it goes without saying, are certainly not expected to behave with the kind of independence and fierce devotion to their own desires that the fisherwoman displays. We still see flashes of sensuality in their relationship – gardening, walking in the fields, letting a ladybug trace paths along their fingers in the midday sun, a cute dance sequence – but the narrative turns in the back half seem rushed in service of a largely moralistic critique of the cruelty of the city’s hive mind.
There’s a logic to the narrative pacing of the final act, especially given the filmmakers’ obvious interest in discovering why the townspeople are so terrible. This is all the more understandable given the form of fairy tales in which Wicker has a debt. But that doesn’t stop the moments in the film’s final passage from feeling fake. I was left with a desire to know more about how the fisherman and her wicker husband work together to negotiate their love as the influence of critical townsfolk encroaches. What’s captivating about the film is the way these two very different beings make sense of and nurture their passion in an environment of contempt. For all his explorations of love and lustWicker doesn’t quite reach its bizarre potential.
Gn entert
