Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård brought their erotic medieval fantasy “Wicker” to the Zurich Film Festival, where the two stars defended its raunchy premise as a satire of marriage.
The film played Monday night on the festival’s Green Carpet, eight months after its Sundance debut. Since then it has drawn attention mainly for the love scenes between Colman, who plays a shunned fisherwoman, and Skarsgård, who plays the husband she commissions from a basket weaver, played by Peter Dinklage. The husband is woven entirely from wicker.
Colman said the script was unlike anything she had read. Her verdict on the marketing was blunter: selling the movie means putting Skarsgård’s picture forward as a very sexy basket. She has called it one of her three favorite screenplays. Skarsgård said the film comments on the patriarchy of the present day and the construct of marriage, and does so with humor. He joked that playing the role fulfilled a lifelong wish for nipples made of wicker.
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson directed and adapted the script from Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story “The Wicker Husband.” Skarsgård replaced Dev Patel, who was attached when the project was announced in 2023. Elizabeth Debicki plays the tailor’s wife, a woman whose quiet unhappiness surfaces when the fisherwoman chooses her own path. Oscar-winning cinematographer Lol Crawley shot the film, and its humor draws comparisons to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Critics have responded warmly, though not without reservations. The film holds a 91 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Collider’s review called Skarsgård the standout and the movie immensely entertaining, but said it leaves too much of its story behind and offers too few scenes pairing Colman with Debicki.
The trailer, released in July, put the film’s explicit content in front of a wide audience. Skarsgård, who also starred in the S&M romantic comedy “Pillion,” has become a leading figure in this niche of adventurous, unconventional romances.
Black Bear acquired the film after Sundance. “Wicker” opens in select theaters October 23 and expands nationwide October 30.
