Warning: Spoilers ahead.
A little necessary background on the film’s plot: Skarsgård’s character is the creation of the local Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) in a rural medieval town, having been commissioned by the town’s ostracized Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman). She’s decided she’s had enough of the bullying and condescension, which is largely due to her gamey aura and not giving a fin about the town’s misogynistic culture. The Basketmaker—whose skills go far beyond furniture making—weaves her a match, Fiddler on the Roof-like, and the Fisherwoman, after an awkward matrimonial moment, takes Wicker Husband home to her funky little cottage.
What happens in that funky little cottage has the townspeople startled out of their sleep: Is someone regularly being murdered in the vicinity of the newlyweds’ love nest? The question arises because the wicker fellow is, in spite of his earthy origin, downright Olympian in the sack.
And here I have to bring up one of the issues that niggled at me throughout this overall lovely fairy tale. There’ve been scores of TikToks spoofing the alluring aspects of bamboo, but I’ve seen only one so far reporting on what would happen if you had sex with a wicker dick. (That is the actual headline: What Would Happen If You Had Sex With a Wicker Dick?) Especially as a woman over 50 (and also over 70), I think there should be far more discussion around the fact that a basket phallus might be one very problematic kind of woody. There’s just no amount of lube that could ameliorate this situation. One TikTok video, even as it mentions something about an abundance of splinters, doesn’t allude to how deeply painful a wicker penis would be. “Oh, get over yourself,” a friend said to me when I mentioned that I found the penis situation untenable. “You have to submit to a suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the story anyway.”
True, but there are other issues that rubbed me the wrong way (sorry). I’ve written about Olivia Colman’s lovely face before. Even when she’s playing a poorly groomed fisherwoman—before, as a bride, she becomes exceedingly, ahem, well-groomed—it’s a pleasure to admire a face unadorned by major aesthetic intervention. She grows almost incandescent as the marriage continues to generate heat, steeping her in the loving embrace of her husband.
Turns out it’s not just in the sack that he’s quite the catch (ouch); he’s comforting, familiar, and supportive—all the attributes you might wish for in a favorite piece of furniture. And that’s the thing. At last, the big screen brings us a middle-aged woman who actually looks middle-aged (and to be clear: beautiful) getting the breath bonked out of her on the regular. And who’s responsible? Basically, a chair. A 52-year-old woman who presents more or less like an actual 52-year-old woman is being portrayed to us as a sexual being, but her partner is a…weave.
Two years ago, I wrote about Babygirl—the movie in which Nicole Kidman plays a 50-something married CEO who acts out her sadomasochistic fantasies with her intern—as the feel-good movie of 2024. “How refreshing it is to watch a middle-aged, likely post-menopausal woman still animated by lust,” I said then. “Especially when we’ve been inundated by warnings, incessant and unnerving, about peri- and postmenopausal angst and physical decay.” Kidman, though, as the internet has reminded us again and again, does not resemble most other women who have been on the earth for over half a century. A close-up of her face in the midst of a volcanic orgasm reveals no lines or crepey skin or even a hint of a jowl.
What made me feel really good about Babygirl, though, was that the horny menopausal heroine retains her audacious power and control. She lies, she f*cks, she goes for what she wants. And while she does suffer for it, she survives—and thrives—through her own grit. The film finishes with an intimate close-up of a satisfied smile, and it is post-coital, and it is hers. Not a typical Hollywood ending, at least not for a wife and mother who has ardently pursued extramarital sadomasochistic sexual fantasies. And that thrilled me.
I didn’t feel likewise elated after walking out of Wicker (though I’d certainly had a grand old time). Back to the medieval town where our Fisherwoman enjoys her fantasy-brought-to-life: The men in this province of make-believe are, to put it ungenerously, idiots, and so, okay, in some way, the Fisherwoman’s clever choice of mate outshines them all. But her lapses in character are annoying. When she allows herself to be persuaded that her husband has cheated on her and impregnated another woman whose infant bears an uncanny resemblance to him—she becomes hysterical and lashes out physically. It requires another suspension of disbelief to accept that she’d be that dumb. The Basketmaker later even gives her a gentle rebuke. “You didn’t really believe she had given birth to that, did you?” he asks. He’d obviously woven the baby (at the request of a neighbor jealous of the Fisherwoman’s joyous new sex life).
Realizing her mistake and believing she has murdered her husband, the Fisherwoman cares for the baby as if it were her own. I’m not sure what “caring” for a wicker baby involves, but it seems to preoccupy the Fisherwoman in a way that perpetuates a beyond-the-grave emotional connection with her dead husband.
Broken and forlorn, she’s once again isolated…till Wicker Husband reappears—repaired and forgiving. They ride off into the sunset, a happy trio, in the back of the Basketmaker’s cart. I get that the movie is a satire, but even so, couldn’t the heroine turn out to be just a little less predictably passive and self-destructive? Does she have to be saved by the perfect guy?
I loved the notion in this movie that a self-assured, sassy, grown-ass woman—a woman with a face lined and imperfect, a face that reveals her age—found herself a raucous, rollicking sex life. But, in the end, disappointed in the plot, I felt sadly bamboozled.
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