Some love stories start with a meet-cute. Wicker starts with a custom order. In the new fantasy romance from Black Bear, Olivia Colman plays a lonely fisherwoman who is tired of being laughed at by her neighbors and decides to solve the problem herself: she asks the village basket weaver to make her a husband. The result, played by Alexander Skarsgård, is tall, devoted, attentive and made entirely of wicker.
The film opens in select U.S. theaters on Friday, October 23, and expands nationwide on October 30. A final trailer released this week leans into the fable’s sweeter side, showing the oddly matched couple in happy, affectionate moments while the rest of the town watches with growing envy.
A fairy tale strictly for grown-ups
Do not let the storybook premise fool you. Wicker is rated R, and early critics describe it as gleefully bawdy, with Colman delivering a steady stream of colorful language and plenty of frank talk about marriage, desire and disappointment. Set in a vaguely medieval seaside village where people are known only by their trades, the story follows what happens when the woman everyone mocked suddenly becomes the happiest person around. The other wives start comparing, the husbands start worrying, and the village slowly turns upside down.
Peter Dinklage plays the mysterious Basket Weaver who seems to have a touch of magic, while Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan and Ben Ashenden round out the ensemble. The wicker husband was brought to life largely with practical effects rather than pure digital trickery, which gives Skarsgård a real, creaking physical presence on screen.
Strong buzz heading into release
Directed and written by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, the duo behind Save Yourselves!, the film adapts Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story The Wicker Husband and premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Reviews have been largely warm: critics praise Colman’s sharp comic timing and the movie’s playful take on what partners owe each other, while a few note that the script wobbles and the ending runs a little long.
For audiences tired of franchise sequels, Wicker looks like the season’s most unusual date-night pick: a strange, funny and surprisingly tender fable about a woman who finally gets exactly what she asked for.