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For many film fans, seeing Olivia Colman’s face on a promotional image is enough to make a movie a must-see. Such is the case with “Wicker,” the latest film starring her and all her wonderfully weird, hilarious, and emotionally effective acting gifts. But she’s far from the film’s only selling point. Based on the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills-Jones, the latest film from writing-directing team Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson is a vulgar, horny, and unexpectedly heartwarming fable. 

Once upon a time, there lived a fisherwoman. Sorry, let me rephrase. Once upon a time, Fisherwoman (we never learn the true name of Olivia Colman’s character) lived by herself in the woods. Every morning, she fishes in the nearby body of water and sells the fish in the nearby village. Despite being middle-aged, she doesn’t have a husband and has never had one, unlike practically every other villager of adult age. One day, after tiring of the villagers’ taunts and jokes, she heads to the workshop of the only one who treats her with kindness: the Basket Maker (Peter Dinklage). She has an odd request for him: she wants him to build her a husband out of wicker. Instead of reacting with derision, Basket Maker is intrigued by the challenge. And through the kind of unexplained magic only found in fantastical stories like this, he successfully constructs a living man entirely out of wicker. 

This Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård) first meets Fisherwoman at the church, dressed in his marital finest. Their wedding ceremony is speedy and tender, and it’s immediately apparent that the unexpected pair is perfect for each other (they don’t even feel the need to put the village’s traditional iron matrimonial collar on the bride). The Fisherwoman and her Wicker Husband quickly fall into a harmonious daily rhythm. He spends the days fixing up the house and tending to the chores, and at night they engage in marital relations. But the villagers are skeptical of the Wicker Husband, and it’s not long before Fisherwoman’s nosy neighbors pose a threat to their happy married life. 

The world that Fischer and Wilson have constructed is unified and fully realized. All of the characters speak with the same hilariously blunt lexicon. They’re all extremely frank and crass; little takes them by surprise, least of all the realities of their neighbors’ lives, such as sex, injury, and death. And the recurring gag of all of the characters referring to each other by their profession (Butcher, Tailor, Innkeeper) or their husband’s profession (Baker’s Wife, Bottle Washer’s Wife) never stops being humorous. It gives the story a timeless quality, evoking fairy tales that use a similar naming structure. But to use it in this film, given the very adult, bawdy conversations that make up much of the dialogue, gives it an absurd, not-quite-our-world quality. This bizarrely banal energy is also present in the village’s customs and superstitions. There’s the aforementioned matrimonial collar, and the villagers constantly practice quick yet elaborate hand movements to superstitiously ward off bad luck. And yes, it’s funny every time.

Olivia Colman is incapable of giving a bad performance. (Or if she has, I haven’t seen it.) “Wicker” is yet another impressive mark on her unblemished filmography. Here, all of her most pronounced acting gifts are used to full effect. She’s bold in her physical and comedic choices, unafraid to make herself look very silly and totally trusting in her directors’ vision. And, of course, her heartbreaking emotional depth helps make her one of the few sympathetic characters in the film. Elizabeth Debicki, on the other hand, gives a deliciously villainous performance as the scheming Tailor’s Wife. She’s essentially the popular girl of the village, easily manipulating those around her to do her bidding and seemingly always getting her way. Debicki revels in this deviousness. And Alexander Skarsgård makes for the ideal companion, despite his unconventional appearance. The Wicker Husband constantly makes grand pronouncements of affection for Fisherwoman. He’s particularly fond of telling her he was “made for her,” which may be adorable, but it’s also true in the technical sense. Skarsgård leans into this tenderness, acting as an oasis for both his wife and the audience in what’s otherwise a desert filled with unpleasantness.

The makeup used to bring the Wicker Husband to life is simply astounding. Skarsgård’s face is completely covered in thatchwork, giving him a scarecrow-like appearance (no shade to Jonathan Bailey, but it’s similar to the work used on him in “Wicked: For Good,” but with the bonus of actually being shot well). It’s a marvel of prosthetic work, least of all because he still manages to look handsome underneath it all. And when he’s seen in various states of undress, this detailed work extends over the rest of his body. It’s a wonder, and the film wouldn’t work if the construction of what’s essentially the titular role was ineffective. Luckily, the makeup team put in the work. It’s a major achievement in practical makeup.

Being a fable, it’s not surprising that the film tells a story that cautions against unwise human traits. With “Wicker,” the consequences of the villagers’ unkind actions serve as a warning against letting one’s deeds be fueled primarily by jealousy, especially if the supposed cure for coveting thy neighbor is to try to eliminate the source of this aggressive envy. Because it aims for an old-fashioned storytelling energy, the grand movements of the plot can be a bit predictable, even as the way this film tells its story is original. But without a doubt, despite the thorny group energy of the village, Fisherwoman and her Wicker Husband manage to build a lovely fairy tale existence for themselves. “Wicker” is a sweet, gently moving love story at its core that reminds its audience that the most effective and necessary traits for a successful relationship of any kind are simple honesty and respect.

Wicker is a wild surprise of a film. It spins a loopy fable that begins ridiculously and ends in tears. It's a bit of magic that, in spite of its ridiculousness, Wicker is an endlessly beautiful fairy tale. Brought to life by yet another astounding performance by Olivia Colman and exquisitely shot and designed, Wicker's treasure is in its hopeless romanticism that insists that pure love and adamant individuality can create irrevocable progress through osmosis.

That change is brought about through Fisherwoman (Colman), who exists in a fictional time and space that looks and sounds like a slightly more askew Elizabethan England. It is a time in which everyone, regardless of sex, is known by their relationship, either to a partner or to a career, or both, in a funnier but similar way to The Handmaid's Tale. Fisherwoman is constantly mocked in this small country village because her profession has her persistently smelling like fish, and because she is haggard, and dirty, and keeps mostly to herself.

The one person in town who seems to treat her with any degree of kindness is Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage, who also provides the film with an infrequent narration). A master of his craft, Basketmaker creates the ceremonial eggs for the town wedding receptions, which the single women toss in the air; as in a modern-day gender reveal party, the one who gets blue powder is thought to be the next person blessed with a husband.

At one such wedding, one of Basketmaker's eggs falls to Fisherwoman, and she is subsequently blasted with blue. The townsfolk are petrified at the implications of this bad omen, and Fisherwoman, frustrated with the constant mockery and in vain hope she might be able to dismantle some of their explicitly patriarchal ceremonies, asks Basketmaker to weave her a husband. He considers. He says okay. He says to meet at the chapel in a month.

And, then there he is: the Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård), in such exceptional prosthetic makeup and design that Guillermo del Toro would shudder in disbelief. The two get married and have insane bed-breaking sex for ten minutes.

Like in Pleasantville, this small disruption to the natural order of things creates a domino effect of uncomfortable progress. Women about town become jealous of Fisherwoman's deafening orgasms and her defiance of gender norms, and the men cannot comprehend why this wicker man is so keen to be a good provider. "When she is happy, it makes me happy," he tells the guys at the local pub. They don't really get it.

Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson's fable, adapted from the short story Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills-Jones, is powerful enough to resurrect the fairy-tale genre all together.

The biggest obstacle to their peace and harmony is Tailor's Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), whose carefully crafted social status is threatened by someone who lives so far outside the bounds of normalcy, so much so that, Iago-like, she tries to poison Fisherwoman's ear with the suggestion of multiple affairs. But, Fisherwoman's husband is so pure of heart that it begins to change everyone's perception of partnership, Tailor's Wife included, and a small town finds itself on the brink of a brand-new era.

Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson's fable, adapted from the short story Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills-Jones, is powerful enough to resurrect the fairy-tale genre all together. Sweet, hilarious, heartbreaking, insane, it accomplishes all it sets out to do and more. Though if I had one complaint it's that the film could even go further. I mean, if we're going to see Colman get humped by a man made of wicker, you might as well show us the whole thing. He is, after all, like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, fully functional (if you know, you know).

Packed to the walls with marvelous performances as it is, Wicker is still Colman's at the end of the day. There are probably few other actors that can make us believe someone falling madly in love with a man made of wicker. She is, as always, luminous and powerfully vulnerable. Through Fisherwoman's massive eyes, through her partnership with her husband, Wicker re-teaches us how to love.

But, beyond its absurdity, Wicker works because its allegory is both clear and flexible. This is a story about upending patriarchy through a pseudo-queer relationship, and what's especially smart about Fischer and Wilson's script is that it demonstrates how any gender-based hegemony disintegrates the integrity not just of women but of men. Yet, it is also a film about artistry and the essential function it plays in any community, and that storytelling can both keep us held back as well as push us forward. It just depends what you're willing to believe.

Based on the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills-Jones, Wilson and Fischer weave a marvelously bawdy fable that expands the original tale in scope and character while staying true to the world the author created. Wicker is set in a village of unspecified time, though it looks fictitiously medieval in a Monty Python or Mel Brooks way. In this village lives the Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), a frumpy spinster with dirt on her face and fish scales clinging to her worn out skirt. The villagers do not have names, and are instead identified by their jobs and their marital status. The Baker Man and the Baker Woman, the Innkeeper, the Shoemaker and the Doctor’s Daughter – oh, remembers the Fisherwoman, she’s now the Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki). As the Fisherwoman peddles her fresh catch through the market, she and the villagers greet each other in a sort of rundown twist on Beauty and the Beast where, instead of Belle merrily singing “Bonjour!”,  she calls out “Cod!” to potential buyers.

At first glance, Wicker appears to be a sweet period piece about a lonely outsider getting her happily ever after. But that’s not the kind of movie that interests Wilson and Fischer. They thrive on the unexpected and delight in transforming a straightforward concept into a naughty comedy that finds a balance between satire and raunch. They understand the power of a well-timed burp, like in the middle of a wedding. They show us without telling us the odd and gender-imbalanced traditions of the village, like a young bride showing off her bejeweled iron wedding collar or a groom being outfitted with a strap-on carrot, all while the uncouth and unwashed neighbors whisper about the Fisherwoman’s hygiene and lack of marriage prospects. 

In her story, Wills-Jones refers to her as “the ugly girl” and Oscar winner Colman interprets this not only in appearance but in her manner, trudging through the muddy streets, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, talking loudly and laughing louder. Colman is great in dignified and serious roles, but it’s so much fun when she doffs the suits and posh British manners in favor of unrefined, unrestrained humor.  

The Fisherwoman is perfectly content to remain unmarried, though the idea begins to take hold until one night she knocks on the door of the Basket Maker (Peter Dinklage). “I want you to make me a husband,” she orders, holding out a sack of coins. He considers, then says, “Be at the church in one month,” and closes the door. Left alone with a daunting task, the Basket Maker waxes Shakespearean with a soliloquy about long limbs and a handsome face. It is a silly monologue that, in the hands of another actor, might feel out of place and unnecessarily self-indulgent, but is very funny with Dinklage’s earnest delivery. When he does this again in a similar scene later, it is even more hilarious.

The Fisherwoman arrives at the church one month later, expecting to find an empty chapel, but instead finds herself a Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård), a literal husband woven from willow and dressed in a nice, new borrowed suit and shoes. Though initially a little reluctant, she takes him home and they enjoy a wedding night so passionate that a couple across the valley wonder who is being murdered. We might momentarily pause to consider how sex with a human-shaped basket could work or be at all pleasant, but Colman is very convincing. Their love-making is so vigorous they break the bed and in the morning, he says simply and sweetly, “This bed is broken. Bring me a hammer. I will fix it.” 

As the Wicker Husband, Skarsgård takes on a role that is starkly different from anything he’s ever been known for. In the post-film Q&A, he confessed that what interested him in the character was that he has never played a nice man and it felt like a fun challenge. Here he is genuinely sweet and kind, gentle (except in bed) and sincere. He is reminiscent of Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands, a bit shy and awkward, speaking slowly and honestly. While his wife goes out each day to earn her living, he stays home and fixes the leaky roof, resets the fishing baskets, and tends to the garden. He is the ideal mate and soon the whispers of the village women shift from revulsion at his appearance to frustration and bitterness that their own husbands aren’t like him.

In the middle of all of this is the Tailor’s Wife. By her appearance, speech, and manners, she is the most refined and educated woman and the most respected. If there was a mayor, he would be her husband. If this was set in the 1950s, she would be running both the garden club and the women’s auxiliary. The other women, many of whom are in some way or another related to her, accept her opinions as fact and when they start to question the unequal divisions of labor and power in their homes, she tries to gently shove them back into compliance and contentment. The men hole up in the tavern and complain about their wives’ new expectations, a shifting tide that threatens the village’s precarious balance. The Tailor’s Wife must put a stop to this. She is a medieval Phylis Schlafly, stamping out any hint of women’s liberation and enforcing the patriarchal structure that only she has risen above. Debicki, with her restrained elegance and withering stares, is a perfect foil to Colman’s Fisherwoman, the two opposites in every way.

The design of the Wicker Husband, an eye-popping achievement of practical effects and prosthetics designed by Weta Workshop’s Joe Dunckley, finds the right balance between off-putting and beautiful. The details in the woven fibers that stretch across Skarsgård’s face are mesmerizing and intricate. The effect is further enhanced by Lol Crawley’s cinematography which adds further depth and complexity in candlelit closeup. 

Wicker is a fable with a moral. It is filthy and funny, surprising and weird. Wilson and Fischer are an exciting team who remind us that adults can — and should — delight in lowbrow humor just as often as wit and that it’s fun to enjoy both at the same time.

Grade: B+

A strange person comes to (an also strange) town and teaches the set-in-their-ways locals how to live and love in the new fairytale film Chocolat. Well, no, it’s called Wicker, but Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s film does bear a faint resemblance to that Lasse Hallström confection of a past movie era, as it does to plenty of other films about a fish-out-of-water charmingly affecting their adopted community. Which isn’t to ding Wicker; while there is plenty of originality to be found in this spritely fable, it’s also nice to see something old-fashioned at a festival so commonly associated with envelope-pushing modernity. 

That said, Wicker might have been something of a scandal back in the days of Chocolat, what with its frequent, bawdy talk of sex, of body parts and fluids and fetishes. The film, based on the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills, is decidedly for grown-ups, despite its fanciful whimsy, a cuteness that risks becoming cloying but never quite does. The mundane disappointments and insecurities of adult life are chief on the movie’s mind, matters of marriage and longing that Wilson and Fischer handle with a winning mix of irreverence and compassion. 

Olivia Colman dirty of face and garment, plays a loner fisherwoman in a rural village in what looks to be somewhere in 1600s England. But it’s not really England, or really any specific time. This other-earth has customs and mores all its own: a wedding ritual that involves the placing of a metal collar around the bride’s neck, a habit of naming people solely after their profession (Elizabeth Debicki plays Tailor’s Wife née Doctor’s Daughter, for example), and a rather credulous approach to magic.

That last part is crucial to Wicker’s story, in which Fisherwoman asks the local reclusive Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) to build her a husband made of the titular material. Her neighbors are taken aback when this patio chair-made man strides into their lives, but they rather quickly accept his existence — even if they don’t like it. 

Part of their problem with this hulking pile of sticks is that he’s played by Alexander Skarsgård, and thus is something of a rattan Adonis. That makes the men of the village uncomfortable, and their wives, well, uncomfortable in an altogether different way. The wicker man is also seen being gracious, helpful, kind to his wife. He’s an excellent, tireless lover and handy around the house. Which puts all the other husbands to shame and disrupts the social order of this cloistered, paternalistic place. Debicki’s prim queen-bee is perhaps most bothered by these developments, appalled that her former punching bag has found — or ordered — the perfect man.

The ordered part, the transactional aspect of the wicker husband’s existence and Fisherwoman’s dawning love for him, does mar the romance of the film some. Wilson and Fischer try to soften that origin story; the Basket Weaver insists that his creation has his own free will. But one doesn’t really buy that, not when he seems so singularly programmed to cater to the Fisherwoman’s every need (both in the bedroom and around the house).

Still, there is something sweet in this union of misfits, largely because Skarsgård and Colman do so much to sell it. Colman especially resonates as Fisherwoman tentatively sets her fierce independence aside and entrusts her heart to another, knowing he could so easily break it. Ah, the terrible perils of coupling.

What’s most engaging about the film, though, is its social survey, tracking the wicker husband’s effects on various townsfolk, from the ribald to the, well, fatal. Wicker is, essentially, a social treatise on equal partnership, urging husbands of any time, in any place to be mindful of their spouse’s needs, to find joy in their joy, comfort in their comfort. It’s a nice, if not terribly novel, sentiment, one delivered with peppery wit as Wicker bounces along, occasionally pausing for a moment of deeper feeling. 

The film has lovely tailoring, from its carefully saturated cinematography from The Brutalist Oscar winner Lol Crowley to Renátó Cseh’s detailed production design. Each actor in the cast — which also includes Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan, and, for a brief moment, Richard E. Grant — is nicely in tune with the film’s cadence, its complex curlicues of language. Wilson and Fischer, whose last film was the well-regarded Sundance horror comedy Save Yourselves!, have a firm command of this weird little ecosystem — they hold the reins just tightly enough to keep things in harmony, but not so much that the film becomes formally rigid. 

Perhaps the ending — in which a lesson is imparted, as one must be in a fable — drags on a tad too long, but otherwise Wicker is a warming, sometimes poignant pleasure, a film full of lively personality and possessed of a rather humane outlook on our petty foibles. It is not exactly forgiving, though; the movie has a harder, more merciless edge than one might expect. But I suppose that’s somewhat apt for our squalid present tense, in which so many of our own fellow townspeople seem to be digging in their heels and refusing to evolve. Their loss, Wicker says with a tart and withering smile.

The Bottom Line

And you thought your husband was stiff!

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People move away from Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) when she comes into town to sell her fish since she smells like the water, and she chuckles with delight when she accidentally receives an egg meant to foreshadow marriage at a town wedding. Mocked by the condescending Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), Fisherwoman opts to commission an unusual work from the Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage): a husband. This new Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård) expresses nothing but devotion for his bride, spending his days fixing things around her home and nights giving her the kind of sexual fulfillment that, as becomes clear quite quickly, isn’t something that any of the human husbands in town are ever really able to do for their wives.

Based on a short story by Ursula Wills, this enchanting fable brings married filmmakers Wilson and Fischer back to Sundance after their previous film Save Yourselves! This is a more dramatic pivot, still laced with comedy and oddities but evocative of something much darker. Creating the Wicker Husband doesn’t require any explanation other than that, in this film’s world, it’s possible simply because someone thought to ask for it. Initially decried as a crime against nature, the townspeople soon come to see his blind and unwavering devotion to his wife as something not just strange but potentially quite desirable. Because a story like this must have a villain, the Tailor’s Wife is the one who takes it upon herself to ensure that this brewing unease boils over into something with the potential to devastate the Fisherwoman and punish her for trying to make her own rules.

The look of the Wicker Husband, who immediately goes to the Tailor to borrow a suit to wear for his wedding, evokes the latter character in Beauty and the Beast, which itself adds layers given that those roles are reversed here. Prosthetic designer Joe Dunckley from Wētā Workshop deserves enormous credit, embellishing the character with magnificent detail that makes him look and feel just as real as any of the actors merely adorned with makeup and costumes. There’s not all that much time spent on dissecting every bit of his body, but what is seen is emphatic and extremely descriptive, keeping this fantastical element as something that can be thought-provoking as a plot device because something so unnatural looks and feels so natural.

This core cast of Emmy winners delivers reliably, with Colman well-experienced with this kind of part thanks to past roles in Wicked Little Letters and Wonka, among others. Skarsgård is much more measured and slightly robotic – in the best way – than his turn in another Sundance film this year, The Moment. Dinklage dutifully performs his critical but otherwise relatively small role, while Debicki digs furthest into her character, navigating a yearning for purpose that transforms into dampening the happiness of those she feels have been able to find theirs. The surrounding universe of this film is filled with entertaining particularities, like the use of a collar during wedding ceremonies to indicate the fidelity to their husbands these new wives will now be expected to fulfill. It’s positively reminiscent in tone of a 2019 Sundance entry, Judy & Punch, using a period setting and fantasy enhancement to unearth timeless truths about the human condition.

Movie Rating: 8/10

A kooky sex-crazed folk tale in search of a larger purpose beyond its whimsical premise, Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s “Wicker” stars Olivia Colman as a prickly fisherwoman who emerges from the fringes of a seaside village to task a basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) with weaving her a husband. That husband is played by a delightfully deadpan Alexander Skarsgård as a man made entirely of wicker fibers, a face that looks like a woven espadrille stretched over a human skull.

This raunchy period romp arrives in spirit of Geoffrey Chaucer’s for-its-time X-rated “Canterbury Tales” and with an A24-ready, Academy-ratioed crisp visual style serviced by cinematographer Lol Crawley (“The Brutalist”). Sure, the premise — originating from a story called “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills-Jones — is a novel one destined to grab attention. But that gets a bit lost in the cast of characters the filmmakers pack into the story, an ensemble of hysterically horny villagers beset by a seeming spell of sexual frustration, and for whom the arrival of this wicker man, played by Skarsgård, upends all their days and ways, tickling their hearts and loins.

Colman’s fisherwoman is largely derided by the villagers for her inside-and-out smelly disposition and crabby countenance, but she keeps the settlement in foodstuff, bringing slimy fish acquired from the nearby river daily to the townsfolk. “Wicker” is a period film with no specific period to call its own, though you could clock its setting as somewhere in the 1800s. Or 1600s. Whatever; this is not your mother’s olden-times cinematic fable. Those unnamed villagers include a tailor (Nabhaan Rizwan), his miserable tradwife (Elizabeth Debicki, radiantly beautiful and magnetic onscreen), her prudish sister (Marli Siu), a wildly incompetent doctor (Richard E. Grant), and many more.

Wilson and Huston Fischer’s film cuts away from the central action involving Colman and Skarsgård to make space for these other individual stories, even as some get washed away in the sameness of their shared suffering. Flesh wounds, fetid moppets, breastmilk-leaking nipples, and sudden gushes of blood make for a Monty Python-style of ribald humor that will alienate and enchant in equal measure.

"Wicker” is at its most naughtily hilarious, however, in the outrageous lovemaking between Colman and Skarsgård. She’s an embittered spinster long overdue for a roll in the hay (or, in this case, with the hay) who lustily slobs on her new husband’s log. (Such puns are par for the course in a screenplay that even employs “gagging” in its modernly outfitted parlance.) And literally, while it’s kept offscreen, the nifty sound design created by Andy Neil allows us to hear the wicker husband’s, uh, growing tumescence that enables him to vigorously rail his fisherwoman wife into squeams and squirms of overwhelming ecstasy. So much so that a bed is broken, and it’s one he’s, who knew, equipped to fix. Husband material, indeed. The lore of how such a wicker man is created, and whether or not he can conceive, or whether or not his sex might be potentially painful given that it’s literally wrought out of coarse natural fibers, isn’t explained so much as it is not the primary interest of the director/screenwriting pair.

Alexander Skarsgård starring in a period fable as a piece of fuckable furniture might not have been top of mind in terms of what you’re expecting from the actor who has recently done such brilliant work in “Succession,” “Pillion,” and "The Moment". But even as the tall Swedish actor is tasked with overembellishing given the prostheses he’s bound behind opposite very real human actors, you emerge from “Wicker” with the sense that no other actor could have played this creature, coolly soothing as a presence and an even romantic one, too.

While Colman’s recent stint of playing blowzy, socially alienating women onscreen (from “The Favourite” to “Empire of Light”) is starting to feel like an overcooked trope, she imbues the fisherwoman with grounded pathos that rises above the rest of the movie’s airy whimsy. When a tragic accident strikes late into the film, her emotional collapse feels piercingly real despite the fabulosity surrounding her. Plus, the comic ridiculousness, as repetitive as it may grow, of her sexual rampage with the wicker man feels singularly like something only Colman could sell.

You might wish that “Wicker” had spent more time with the other villagers it weaves into the frames, whether Dinklage’s hovel-dwelling basket wizard, Máté Mészáros’ local drunkard, or Gustav Lindh’s lithe and undersexed bottlewasher. But you have to commend the filmmakers — on their second outing after 2020’s somewhat twee science-fiction outing “Save Yourselves!” — for widening the berth for so many characters in such feature-length time. Crawley’s images, too, elevate what could have been schlocky material (and what of someone like Chaucer or Edmund Spenser, great perverted English writers whom this movie homages, wasn’t working in schlock?) into a quirkfest gilded with prestigious trappings.

At the fibrous heart of the movie, though, is Skarsgård as a taciturn man made of wood whose soul is hardly made of such, and a relationship you root for opposite Colman’s emotionally twisty turn. “Wicker” threatens to feel largely like a logline writ into something grander (i.e., a short story with a wild idea stretched into a feature), but these actors are irresistibly weird and wonderful, as only they could be.

Grade: B