With something smart and pertinent to say about relationships between men and women, happiness and love, jealousy and longing and other matters of the heart, Wicker is the year’s most unexpected charmer.
A hit at Sundance where it was picked up by Black Bear, this wry film from writer-directors Alex Huston and Eleanor Wilson is sexy and satirically funny, but also oddly haunting as a truly twisted fable that says its never too late to become your own best version of Cinderella.
Case in point is The Fisherwoman (all the characters are identified by their profession or marital status), played to the hilt by Olivia Colman (who can do no wrong). In this storybook little village she is ostracized, acknowledged negatively by the town’s men for her fishy smell, insulted regularly when not being totally ignored. She’s sharp enough not to let it deter her, throwing off retorts like “lick my worm.”
Still we see she’s heartbreakingly lonely at home with little to keep her company, and so one day, after fate and the Bottle Washer’s wedding chooses her to be next in line, she wills it into truth and goes to the Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage), a man with his own private loathing of the townspeople. She asks him point blank to make a wicker husband for her. Lo and behold he does in the strapping form of a bewickered Alexander Skarsgård (nicely tucked under the wicker facade), a beautifully crafted speciman who turns out to be a dream version of the perfect husband, one who professes he wants only what will make his new wife happy. Boy does he know how to do that!
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This unlikely pair have the hottest sex in town, practically destroying the furniture in the process. Suddenly like an aged Cinderella the Fisherwoman has hooked the big one and when word gets around, the locals are not happy about it, particularly Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), unfulfilled herself, who has a real problem with all of this and sets out to convince The Fisherwoman that her divine guy is actually unfaithful. The other townsfolk speculate on his prowess, his package, and why The Fisherwoman has lost all the dirt on her face and is now positively glowing.
In their deliciously entertaining film, Huston and Wilson mine this simple situation for all its worth, exploring how this event affects all the town’s marriages, the shortcomings of the men who take their wives for granted, the inherent unspoken misery of the women, the pervasive misogynist mentality, and the secrets and lies men and women keep from each other. When the male contingent wonder if the Basket Weaver can create the woman of their dreams things get really interesting.
Colman is incapable of playing any character with just one note, and here delivers another three-dimensional performance of a woman determined to change her life and find her happy place in it. Sarsgård touchingly underplays Wicker Husband and makes him undeniably more human, even more so than the other men who were born and not woven into being. Dinklage is perfect casting as the slightly duplicitous Basket Weaver, an artisan who has his own surprises in store. Debicki slips into the villain role with a nice subtlety that doesn’t hit us in the head with her evil plan to make The Fisherwoman regret ever conjuring up this dreamboat. The entire cast is in fact well chosen, including the underused Richard E. Grant as the doctor.
The craft of this little gem is exquisite including Lol Crawley’s gorgeous cinematography, Renato Cseh’s lovely production design that makes all this look like it was plucked right out of a Grimms’ Fairy Tale, and both the makeup and visual effects (Weta Workshop) teams which make wicker come wickedly to life in ways never before thought possible.
Producers are Ed Sinclair, Tom Carver, Colman, Justin Lothrop, Brent Stiefel, Brad Zimmerman, David Michod, Andrea Cornwell, Oliver Kassman, Tim Headington, Lia Buman, Ryan Heller and Michael Bloom.
Title: Wicker
Distributor: Black Bear
Release date: October 23, 2026
Directors-screenwriters: Alex Huston and Eleanor Wilson
Cast: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan, Gustav Lindh, Ella Bruccoleri, Ben Ashenden, Kiell Smith Binoe
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 45 mins
