Well before the lattice work to make a man of wood in “Wicker” can be seen, the craftsmanship of Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s hysterical second feature collaboration is impeccable. It is hardly high society that they embed with in the English countryside as they set a bawdy comedy in a small village where everyone is well-acquainted with each other’s dirty laundry, but everything is first class from its top-flight ensemble including Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki and Alexander Skarsgård to the fine threads they wear and the lovingly constructed thatch huts they make their homes, all reflecting a seriousness of intent that makes it that much more delightful that it’s in the service of such profound silliness.
Inspired by Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband,” the film has a relatively simple story that Hutson and Wilson wring for all of its comic potential when it finds Colman as a cast-off fisherwoman who only comes to town to sell her catch, an arrangement that seems just fine with the locals who are apt to note they can smell her a mile away, though it is she who thinks they stink. Everyone’s name comes from the work they perform and marriage remains a ritual symbolized by a man placing a metal collar on a woman, a life that couldn’t seem any less appealing to the fisherwoman who enjoys going back to her home by the riverbank as soon as she can. However, by simply lingering around a little too long in the town square one afternoon after selling her wares on the street, she is around for the nuptials of one of the more highly sought-after women in town (Marli Liu) as the daughter of the local doctor (a nearly unrecognizable yet utterly memorable Richard E. Grant). Before she knows it, she’s tabbed to be the next one to wed when she “wins” the village’s version of a bouquet toss, an exercise where eggs are shaken to hatch. Supposedly a sign of good luck, it sends the fisherwoman reeling when the pressure to marry will be intense and she comes up with a novel solution, approaching the basket maker (Peter Dinklage) to deliver her a husband crafted from the same materials as his bowls.
The idea works better than anyone could think, both to the fisherwoman’s surprise and in terms of the film itself when Skarsgård is anything but wooden as the wicker man, bringing real soul and gravitas to the part, only accentuated by the heaps of intricate makeup that’s remarkable to lay eyes on throughout. He is a man of single purpose in the film, but ends up serving many as a love object to the fisherwoman, and word quickly spreads to other women in the village about how satisfied she is, exposing how insufficient their own partners are when Woody doesn’t only break beds with his passionate lovemaking but always offers to fix it the next morning as well. When this poses a threat to the entire patriarchal structure of the village with its underwhelming leadership, the Tailor’s Wife (Debicki) — and older sister to the newlywed doctor’s daughter — seeks a stop to it, preferring to keep things as they are when her own position within the community has been quite cushy, but while she becomes a rival to the fisherwoman, the way they have been pitted against each other and show far more determination and ingenuity than their male counterparts suggest any time fighting one another is a distraction from the real enemy that needs to be confronted.
There are double entendres a plenty with a narrative built around wood, but “Wicker” operates with a level of sophistication that’s rare, making a striking impression from its opening shot of trembling water that reveals Colman’s fisherwoman — among the best in “Brutalist” cinematographer Lol Crawley’s impressive career — and moves fluidly between trenchant satire and real moments of humanity throughout as people wrestle with their place in the world. After tackling some similarly big ideas on a smaller scale in their feature debut “Save Yourselves” in which the threat of the apocalypse amusingly didn’t necessarily see anyone rising to the occasion, it is really special to see Fischer and Wilson armed with the kind of resources that their imagination deserves, yielding a brilliantly funny comedy that has a lot on its mind in other ways.
“Wicker” does not yet have U.S. distribution.