Lonely spinster Olivia Colman commissions a husband woven from the titular material – and a small village discovers how much their social order relied on her remaining unloved.
★★★★
Wicker is being trumpeted in some corners of the internet as a key example of “romantasy”, but in fact it’s a comedy fable, and a riotous one at that.
Adapted by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson from Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story “The Wicker Husband”, it follows a fisherwoman on the outskirts of a seaside village, in a vaguely pre-modern world of muddy streets, thatched roofs and traditional handicrafts. Mocked by her neighbours for being single and smelly, she commissions the local basket weaver to make her a husband from wicker. He turns out better than anyone bargained for, and he upends every notion of social order and gender politics in the village simply by being a good guy, showing loving care to someone the villagers had implicitly decided didn’t deserve it. Without her spinster misery as a yardstick, it’s suddenly much harder for anyone to feel good about themselves, a dangerous destabilisation that unleashes more than expected.
Colman is dependable as ever (this role sits squarely in her wheelhouse, no stretch for this surely dame-to-be), but the real revelations are Elizabeth Debicki and Marli Siu. Debicki is unnerving and infuriating as the emotionally sadistic local queen bee, flouncing around and gently (and then not so gently) policing the womenfolk’s social conformity for her own psychological comfort: a kind of kapo of the patriarchy. And Marli Siu, playing a newlywed bride and possibly the most underappreciated actress in Britain on the strength of this, Our Ladies and Anna and the Apocalypse, runs the gamut from punchline facial reactions to emotional devastation.
Peter Dinklage is also superb as the magical weaver who conjures up the Wicker husband of the title, plus one or two other surprises. Alexander Skarsgård is solid, but the performance is measured and restrained as an artistic choice, and he’s buried under a practical wicker suit, a great piece of work from Joe Dunckley and Wētā Workshop. In some shots his arms are replaced by puppeted ones, held up to the sun so the light pierces through the weave, which is a magical image. All this makes him more of a noble “born yesterday” blank slate for people to project onto – the villagers and the audience alike. Richard E. Grant also drops in briefly as the village Doctor, effortlessly channelling a bratty childman with an annoying grin.
It’s all structured as a perfect fable, with the tragic flaws, ironic payoffs and dramatic reversals and inversions one might hope for. But most of all Wicker is very, very funny.
Wicker plays at the London Film Festival in October, and is released in UK and Irish cinemas by Black Bear on 30 October 2026.