By the thumbing of my prick something weaving this way comes.
Wife and husband writer directors, Eleanor Wilson & Alex Huston Fischer have fashioned a film based on Ursula Wills’ short story, The Wicker Husband, called WICKER.
Olivia Colman stars as a fishmonger, derided by the village she sells her catch to due to her smell. This olfactory ostracisation makes it impossible for socialisation so hers is a very solitary existence. Loneliness lives in her loins.
Desperate for companionship she pays the local basket maker to make her a husband. Proving some men are baskets, the craftsman weaves a willow with Willie to share her pillow. Broad shouldered, gently spoken, utterly devoted, and with wood that is bed busting, the creation is like Pinocchio with a penis.
A handy man with a hard on, his restoration of the house is matched by the restoration of her happiness. Such stable coitus disrupts the status quo of the village and the green eyed monster of jealousy and the poisoned chalice of malice infect the denizens in droves.
Normally, it is derogatory to declare a performance “wooden” but Alexander Skarsgård’s presence and portrayal is the good wood indeed. He and Colman’s chemistry twigs from the start, takes root and branches out in an extraordinary bower.
The supporting cast is superb. Peter Dinklage as the weaver is deliciously deadpan especially in his delivery of saucy soliloquies. Richard E. Grant pops up as a dipso medico and Elizabeth Debicki is his daughter, perhaps the most interesting character in the picture, hiding in plain sight.
Unabashedly bawdy, doubled up with double entendre, WICKER explores the toxic ties of traditional matrimony, examining how the hallowed institution is so often a hollowed one.
An indefatigable fable of dark fairy tale aphrodisia, WICKER is a wicked entertainment to savour.
