GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE, THE
(director/writer: Magnus von Horn; screenwriter: Line Langebek Knudsen; cinematographer: Mychal Dymek; editor: Agnieszka Glinska; music: Frederikke Hoffmeier; cast: Vic Carmen Sonne (Karoline), Trine Dyrholm (Dagmar), Besir Zeciri (Peter), Joachim Fjelstrup (Jorgen), Benedikte Hansen (Jorgen’s mother), Ava Knox Martin (Erena), Tessa Hoder (Frida); Runtime: 115; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Malene Blenkov, Mariusz Wlodarski; Nordisk Film/MUBI; 2024-B/W Denmark/Poland/Sweden-in Danish, with English subtitles)
“Bleak and horrifying black-and-white fictionalized true crime story set in Copenhagen.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The Swedish-born, Polish-based Magnus von Horn (“Sweat”/”The Hereafter”) directs and writes this bleak and horrifying black-and-white fictionalized true crime story set in Copenhagen, in 1919. The arthouse exploitation period drama refers to the baby-killer case from 1921 (where a caretaker was convicted of killing nine babies).
It’s co-written by Line Langebek Knudsen, a Dane. The experimental eerie music was composed by the Danish musician Frederikke Hoffmeier.
The titular knitting needle is used to give oneself an abortion in a public bath-house. We’re in a time when women were ill-served in a post-war patriarchal industrial society.
The fictional impoverished married factory seamstress named Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) becomes pregnant. Her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri) is missing in World War One, and she has sex with her textile mill boss (Joachim Fjelstrup). Though he’s willing to marry her, his mother (Benedikte Hansen) won’t allow it.
After Armistice Day Karoline’s husband surprisingly returns severely disfigured with facial wounds that make him look like a circus freak.
At a public bathhouse, Karoline botches her abortion attempt and encounters the lady candy shop owner, Dagmar Overbye (Trine Dyrholm), who tells her people will pay to adopt her baby. Dagmar keeps the baby for her profitable underground adoption agency and hires Karoline to work for the agency with Dagmar’s 7-year-old daughter Erena (Ava Knox Martin), but withholds from her the grim secrets about what she’s really up to.
Karoline’s viewed as a manipulative woman, glad to dump Peter and to get ahead anyway she can, while Peter accepts his bitter fate and joins a circus freak show.
The lesson to be learned here is that to be good, one must reject the temptations of evil.
This is an amazing film, filmed in the way they made silents back in the day.
It played at the Cannes Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 12/13/2024 GRADE: B+
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