The Girl with the Needle begins with a creepy montage of faces meshing into each other. It’s 1919. The chaos caused by the recently concluded World War I retains its power to unsettle lives.
Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is struggling to get by. Just when Karoline seems set to put her old life behind her, things go belly-up. Her missing husband Peter returns, most of his face blown off as a reward for having served in the war. And Karoline is pregnant with her lover.
Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who promises to find families for babies born out of wedlock, seems to be the answer. Karoline is soon going to learn what exactly happens to the infants handed over to Dagmar.
The Danish-language production, which is out on MUBI, ranks as one of the most unusual films about a woman’s rights over her body. Magnus von Horn’s gripping movie tells a contemporary story of reproductive rights while evoking the stylistic flourishes of Expressionist cinema as well as early vampire films.
Every frame in the Oscar-nominated film points to a place and time gone awry. The stark black-and-white palette creates a consistently chilling effect. Michal Dymek’s gorgeous monochrome compositions make eyes glitter like pinpoints and squalid interiors appear sinister. The feeling of having wandered into a fairground out of a twisted fairy tale is sealed by Peter’s expressionless mask and the ravaged flesh it conceals.
It’s a brutal world, captured perfectly in the scene where a seemingly respectable woman slaps her daughter so hard for speaking out of turn that blood trickles from the child’s mouth. The shocking moment – one among many – is an early warning of just how cruel the milieu is.
For all its provocations, The Girl with the Needle is empathetic towards its collection of misfits and social rejects. Some scenes in Magnus von Horn’s third feature seem to be there with the sole intention to shock. But most of the time, the movie proceeds like a prolonged nightmare, filled with strange occurrences but surprises too.
Vic Carmen Sonne, with her intensely mobile face and darting eyes, and Trine Dyrholm, solid and impassive, are terrific in the lead roles. Avo Knox Martin, who plays Erena – whom Dagmar claims is her daughter – has the kind of angelic face that conceals darkness. It’s not Erena’s fault. Like Karoline, or even Dagmar in her own way, the females in The Girl with the Needle have been perverted by circumstances beyond their abilities, let alone understanding.
Also start the week with these films:
In ‘Shala’, love in the time of the Emergency
In ‘Thelma’, a grandma takes on a phone scammer
The original ‘The Day of the Jackal’ is a nail-biting thriller
