‘Wicker’ Review: Olivia Colman Orders a Man Made of Wood in a Bawdy Fable Perfectly Suited for Anyone Tempted to Marry Their AI Chatbot

Key Highlights

• Related Stories 'Heated Rivalry' Stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie Set as Olympic Torchbearers 'Heated Rivalry' Fans Are Flocking to the Real-Life Ice Rink: ‘We Want to Support It All We Can’ In writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s bawdy bigscreen adaptation, the “ugly woman” of Wills-Jones’ imagination is played by the perfectly lovely Olivia Colman, who’s no grimier than the other townsfolk — except perhaps the lovely tailor’s wife (Elizabeth Debicki) — and seemingly content to have no part in the local marriage customs.
• In a significant step up from 2020 Sundance darling “Save Yourselves!” the filmmaking pair don’t stray far from Wills-Jones’ intention, using the story’s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage.
• Popular on Variety At the same time, they take feisty delight in embellishing just how uncouth these townspeople are (except for Peter Dinklage’s master basketmaker, who’s as couth as an openly gay artisan can be in a town where people piss and fart in public).
• One could say the filmmakers have been strategically reverent toward the source material, but slyly disrespectful in all other respects — like the marriage custom of locking a heavy copper collar around the bride’s neck and a strap-on carrot over the groom’s nibbly bits.
• Such touches give the film a distinctively irreverent tone, not dissimilar from the ignorant peasant folk in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” to the degree that it might have been fun to see a man in drag playing Colman’s “ugly woman” role — not that there’s anything wrong with the Oscar winner’s interpretation.