.png){kind=logo}
In Ursula Wills-Jones’ 2008 short story “The Wicker Husband” (not to be confused with the “The Wicker Man”), an unpleasant fisherwoman in an unenlightened medieval town asks the local basketmaker to weave her a partner. From there, the supernatural fable could be “Pinocchio” for adults, only it’s not the wooden creation’s nose that grows, and this ideal husband cannot tell a lie, whispering things like “I was made to be with you” and “You are the only reason that I live and breathe” — which are not only true, but just about the most romantic thing one can say to a woman so unfortunate of feature and unfragrant of aroma.
In writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s bawdy bigscreen adaptation, the “ugly woman” of Wills-Jones’ imagination is played by the perfectly lovely Olivia Colman, who’s no grimier than the other townsfolk — except perhaps the lovely tailor’s wife (Elizabeth Debicki) — and seemingly content to have no part in the local marriage customs. In a significant step up from 2020 Sundance darling “Save Yourselves!” the filmmaking pair don’t stray far from Wills-Jones’ intention, using the story’s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage.
At the same time, they take feisty delight in embellishing just how uncouth these townspeople are (except for Peter Dinklage’s master basketmaker, who’s as couth as an openly gay artisan can be in a town where people piss and fart in public). One could say the filmmakers have been strategically reverent toward the source material, but slyly disrespectful in all other respects — like the marriage custom of locking a heavy copper collar around the bride’s neck and a strap-on carrot over the groom’s nibbly bits.
Such touches give the film a distinctively irreverent tone, not dissimilar from the ignorant peasant folk in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” to the degree that it might have been fun to see a man in drag playing Colman’s “ugly woman” role — not that there’s anything wrong with the Oscar winner’s interpretation. The adventurous actress dirties up her frock and face to play the village pariah, who reeks of fish and would be no man’s idea of a suitable wife, except perhaps the one-eyed bum who sleeps in the town square.
No matter. Solitude suits her fine. And then one day, after accidentally “winning” a silly game to predict who will be the next to wed, she changes her mind and orders up a mate from the master basketmaker — the way one might request a mail-order bride or life-size love doll. He’s a wordy chap (the basketmaker, not his creaking creation), waxing Shakespearean as he considers his commission. Dinklage’s multiple monologues stick out, assuming you can hear them over Anna Meredith’s jauntily invasive score — one of the few embellishments that doesn’t improve the experience.
Where Wilson and Fischer really deepen Wills-Jones’ tale is in the private moments between the fisherwoman and her wicker husband, who awaits her at the altar in a handsome new suit and shoes borrowed from her neighbors — the tailor (Nabhaan Rizwan), shoemaker (Scott Alexander Yougng) and so on. Back at her run-down shack, the long-neglected lass enthusiastically experiences a lover’s attention for the first time, unperturbed by his wooden … everything. And who can blame her, seeing as how he’s embodied by Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård, that strapping sapling of a man, clearly recognizable beneath a veneer of elegantly woven willow?
One can only imagine the endless hours of debate that went into deciding how this wicker husband should look. He couldn’t be too sexy, or else the other women in town would be instantly jealous. They should be initially skeptical, the way one might be to learn that a friend was marrying her AI chatbot, only to come around once they see the fisherwoman’s husband doing chores and doting on his wife. But he can’t be too offputting either, lest he alienate the audience. (Per the directors’ Sundance Film Festival intro, there were practical considerations, too, like whether to give him nipples.)
After all those considerations, the filmmakers landed somewhere between “Bicentennial Man” (whose boxy robot shell was kind of deal-breaker) and the fish man in “The Shape of Water” (far from human, but blessed with nice abs and a limited vocabulary). The wicker husband isn’t exactly hot, but he’s handsome, and where the other men in town love to hear themselves talk, the newcomer proves reserved in both speech and gesture. The early scenes between this unlikely couple are tender, almost loving — a dynamic that’s not lost on the village women, all of whom have trouble with their own husbands.
For a time, it doesn’t feel like Wilson and Fischer know what to do with the story, which stalls a bit in the second act — the part where they ought to have embellished upon what Wills-Jones had written. The plot requires the tailor’s wife to introduce doubts in the fisherwoman’s mind about her affectionate man’s fidelity. It could be a consequence of the movie’s insolent sense of humor, but there’s something unconvincing (or else too convenient) about how often the fisherwoman’s attitude changes, from caring nothing about marriage to cautiously inviting a man into her life to completely distrusting him when rumors swirl.
Is she really so weak of will? The script needs her to be in order to prove its point, which makes a few of her choices (to say nothing of her peers’ behavior) tough to accept. A fable is only as strong as its moral lesson, and while so many are rock solid, this one’s made of wicker.
English (US) ·