The man Alexander Skarsgård plays in Wicker may be woven together with sticks and straw, but he’s the kind of guy you want to be. Never mind that he’s a literal basket case.
Mystical forces bring him to life, but he proves himself to be more grounded than most of the ordinary people in his village. He’s a devoted partner, a helpful neighbor, a tireless worker, and, on top of it all, an impressive lover. Those who don’t adore him completely loathe him, usually for the exact same reasons.
The bawdy storybook comedy, which hits theaters on Friday, is written and directed by the husband-and-wife filmmaking team Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, who adapted it from the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills. “A lot of our own relationship was examined when we were writing the film,” Wilson says.
“A lot of the Wicker Husband is me, right?” Fischer says.
“Sure,” his wife says slowly. Too slowly. “For sure.”
“Yeah,” Fischer repeats with a satisfied smile: “Just based on me.”
In this grown-up fairy tale, the Wicker Husband is assembled by a basket weaver (played by Peter Dinklage) who can handcraft living, feeling beings. He is asked to make this ideal companion by Olivia Colman’s lonesome, middle-aged outcast, known as The Fisherwoman. (Everyone in the story is known only by their work.) Her Wicker Husband adores her, but their fellow townsfolk grow curious, then jealous, and finally turn against both of them, which stress-tests their happily-ever-after.
“There’s a lot of fun to be had with all the villagers and making fun of how they react and their own shortcomings within their relationships,” Wilson says.
Wicker also gets surprisingly provocative. This is not a bedtime story for children, but more like a bedtime story for adults. The oddball couple’s loud nighttime passions both unsettle and intrigue their neighbors. Some men in the village feel he makes them look bad, and they’re mostly right—many of the local ladies only wish they had partners who were so capable and caring. A few of the couples have even more provocative ideas in mind, as if adding a third made of furniture material is as easy as adding another chair to their table.
Even though the story seems to be set long ago, it has modern trends on its mind. “So many people in the world are talking about different ways that we can do relationships. We wanted to bring a lot of that into the script,” Wilson says. “They're very lusty and it sort of opens up this possibility of a different type of sex life.”
For a few men, the Wicker Husband becomes aspirational. A young fellow known as the Bottle Washer starts to see Skarsgård’s character as a mentor, after too long being misled by the folktale version of toxic influencers. “He sees a different way of being a man because everyone else in the village just models this sort of masculine bravado and complains about their wives and jokes about all the nagging that they do or whatever,” Fischer says. “The Bottle Washer sees in the Wicker Husband that maybe there's a gentler way to behave."
Moviegoers might see the same. Along with last year’s Train Dreams, Wicker models a kind of honorable masculinity. The Wicker Husband is strong but thoughtful, protective but sensitive, and he’s deeply, madly devoted to his Fisherwoman. Still, their best-laid plans start to unravel, testing what it takes to hold their relationship all together.
In Wicker, Olivia Colman plays a lonesome, middle-aged outcast, known as The Fisherwoman.
The filmmaking couple doesn’t pretend to have magical answers. Wicker simply emerged from trying to ask the right questions as their own relationship deepened. “We actually got married a couple months before we wrote the first draft of Wicker,” Wilson says.
“It was a very bold choice to write a satire about marriage,” her husband adds.
“As if we know everything,” his wife says.
They tied the knot in 2021 and finished the screenplay later that year, but like many modern couples they had been together for a long time before. As they start unspooling their own history, Fischer says: “I always think of When Harry Met Sally, and all those little vignettes, the old couples who tell their stories.”
“We are coming up on eleven years this month,” Wilson says. Their first movie, the 2020 comedy Save Yourselves!, about a couple who are terminally online, came together after four years of dating. But even before that, their work lives and romantic lives were always entwined.
“When we met, we started working together right away on gig jobs because we were in the freelance life,” her husband explains. “Eleanor hired me to shoot a documentary in Iceland. I hired Eleanor to produce these little short docs around the U.S., and we traveled together. We found that we were always sort of compatible and had a good time creatively. Making movies together was unexpected.”
“We met on Tinder,” Wilson says. “It is pretty crazy, because I did not think when I met Alex that I would find my life partner and my work partner in the same day. I was actively not looking for that.”
Fischer wasn’t either. “It's like, ‘I hope she's a lawyer. I hope I get to meet a doctor or someone with a real job,’” he says.
“Massive fail on both our parts,” his wife jokes.
Finding support in each other during tough times is one of the prevailing themes in Wicker. All too often in real life, however, hardship fractures the relationship rather than forging it into something strong. “[Life] sneaks up on you, which is what the movie's about. It catches you off guard and it's difficult,” Fischer says.
“Then you have to rise to the occasion,” Wilson says.
“When you're in a relationship with somebody, there's nowhere to hide,” her husband says.
The Wicker Husband is a devoted partner, a helpful neighbor, a tireless worker, and, on top of it all, an impressive lover.
That may be The Wicker Husband’s true magic power: He’s brand new, so he’s not capable of pretending. He doesn’t attempt to act tougher than he is, and isn’t afraid to say what is actually in his head rather than expecting her to mind-read. “He's very literal and most people aren't very literal,” Fischer says. “Most people don't say what they think at all.”
“They’re just nervous to say their actual feelings, and so they dance around it,” Wilson adds.
“He only says what he feels,” her husband adds.
The Fisherwoman has been around longer, is more battered by life, and is therefore more circumspect. “The Fisherwoman isn't a perfect partner,” Wilson says. “She’s never really opened herself up in this way before. When you do, it reveals parts of yourself that are not always pretty. She enters into this [relationship] as a bit of a joke to mock the village, and then everything that happens takes her by surprise.”
When the women of the village begin to fawn over her woven man, her insecurities overwhelm her. “Her whole thing is that she has to learn to love herself,” Wilson says. “You can't really let love into your life until you accept that you are worthy of love.” She looks to her husband, sitting beside her on the Zoom chat. “And I don't know … I felt like that’s what I went through in past relationships.”
“Same,” Fischer says. “I also identified with the Fisherwoman more than the Wicker Husband, for that reason.”
“What attracted us to the short story was that allegory,” Wilson says. “It's really fun for audiences to be able to see themselves in these roles, or see what they would or wouldn't do or how they would do it differently, and then have discussions about it. We did test screenings, and it was really fun when we saw people sticking up for different characters. That's the best thing.”
In wicker-making, as well as romantic disagreements, the same lesson applies: it is better to bend than to break.