(Advisory; some adult content!)
So, what’s a girl to do when she can’t find herself a husband?- -Why, have one made up, of course! They may actually be an improvement on the genuine article! You will be their reason for existing!
Don’t confuse Wicker (2026) with The Wicker Man (1973), which is horrifying and disturbing but completely different. Wicker is based on a short story by Ursula Wills that blends humor, fantasy, romance, satire, and dark folk-tale elements…
In Wicker, Olivia Colman plays a lonely, ridiculed fisherwoman living in a conservative, vaguely medieval seaside village where a woman’s worth is tied strictly to traditional marriage. Fed up with her small-minded neighbors, she commissions a local basket maker (Peter Dinklage, above) to craft her a husband out of willow and wicker. He does a great job, because the wicker creation (Alexander Skarsgard) is sentient, ambulatory, deeply affectionate, and an attentive partner; this isn’t “Groot,” folks! “Mother Nature provides, I only augment!,” explains Peter Dinklage’s character.
“I’d climb him!,” says another of the town’s women about this wooden fantasy man, who prompts fierce jealousy, panic, and societal chaos among the villagers. This movie is not for children as it is raunchy and there is passionate lovemaking, suggestive movement, and even bed-breaking! This R-rated fantasy is, however, a witty and surprisingly sweet fable that satirizes rigid gender roles and marriage…
There just hasn’t been such an unlikely couple since perhaps 1987’s TV series of Beauty and the Beast, which featured Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman in his leonid magnificence…a true furry classic! At least Vincent and Catherine were both mammalian…
Many folk tales have dark elements, but Wicker does apparently have a happy ending, with the created man and his love-interest leaving the village, complete with a wicker child! I don’t know if they name him Knot or Splinter, but perhaps a sequel could expand on that…
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