There are two ways to watch Magnus von Horn's eerie Cannes competition drama Pigen med nålen, or The Girl with the Needle. Both are equally enticing. The first involves going in cold, and gradually discovering the chilling layers to its seemingly tempered plot. The second is with foreknowledge of the real history on which it's loosely based, a sordid 1920s saga that makes for fascinating true crime material.
Just in case, those details will be relegated to the end of this review, but either way, the movie makes for an enticing look at who gets their story told, and more importantly, how. The stark black-and-white cinematography emphasizes the violence and ugliness in the movie's margins (and at its core), making for a visceral period drama about motherhood and desperation.
What is The Girl with the Needle about?
In the aftermath of World War I, a young working-class woman, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), is evicted from her cramped attic apartment in Copenhagen. Her husband went missing on the front lines, but without confirmation of his death, she doesn't qualify for a widow's social assistance. A whirlwind romance with the owner of the factory where she works seems like a way out of poverty, but strict class norms ensure their relationship won't get very far, despite her being pregnant with his child.
Unable to fathom single motherhood in her social and economic position, she attempts a self-induced abortion at a public bath using a lengthy instrument — the needle of the title. It's a discomforting, wince-inducing scene that is, thankfully, interrupted by a kindly middle-aged woman, Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), and her adolescent daughter. The helpful stranger tells Karoline, should she no longer want her child after she gives birth, to come find her.
Some time goes by, and the trials of early parenthood prove too much for Karoline, at which point she finally seeks Dagmar out at her confectionery. Dagmar takes the baby off Karoline's hands, promising to smuggle it to a family in need. The gap between acquiring unwanted children and Dagmar leaving to place them with new families is quick — a matter of days, if not mere hours — so Karoline has no time for regrets. However, the babies still need to be fed in the interim, and Karoline volunteers as a wet nurse for Dagmar's operation, if only as a means to allay any lingering guilt.
It takes about half of the film's nearly two-hour runtime for this central premise — the meeting of Karoline and Dagmar — to fall into place, but the movie endears us to Karoline's best and worst qualities in the interim.
The Girl with the Needle is enhanced by its layered performances.
In one of the movie's earliest scenes, Karoline displays a playful meanness towards an adolescent boy, a fleeting moment that speaks to her volatile, youthful nature. The camera often captures Sonne in moments of uncomfortable restraint, where she's prevented from really moving, either by the frame or by any number of situations in which she's placed. For instance, in one scene the factory owner's wealthy mother has her forcefully examined by a gynecologist.
The camera always works in tandem with Sonne's performance — in tight close-ups, or otherwise — all but trapping her, as the high contrast of the images highlight her weary disposition. She's at the end of her rope from the moment the film begins, making her rejection of parenthood seem like not only the understandable choice, but the obvious one.
However, as soon as Dagmar appears, Dyrholm's self-assuredness proves liberating for Karoline. She essentially moves in with the mysterious do-gooder and begins taking care of her daughter in addition to the newborns being smuggled in and out. More importantly, she moves freely about Dagmar's apartment above her store, finding a sense of liberation and purpose — that is, until things at Dagmar's start to get a little strange. The men Dagmar spends her time with seem to know something Karoline does not, though perhaps having found some semblance of peace, she may not want to rock the boat.
Even Dagmar's daughter starts acting strangely and violently, hinting at elements of her upbringing that make Karoline curious about the exact nature of Dagmar's supposedly altruistic operation. All the while, Sonne anchors us to a journey where curiosity demands knowing more details, but the desire for peace and quiet requires the opposite, since her character has finally found respite from her situation.
For those unaware of where the story is headed, the film's gradual discoveries prove shocking and disorienting, sensations that Sonne wears just as comfortably as the character's exhaustion and calm.
A terrifying history informs The Girl with The Needle.
Although the movie projects the real identity of Dagmar, it doesn't play its final hand until late into the story. Between the broad premise and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it apartment nameplate, it soon becomes clear that she's Dagmar Overbye, a notorious Danish serial killer responsible for murdering dozens of newborns and infants. Not knowing this beforehand leads to an unnerving experience that becomes gradually more terrifying, but foreknowledge of the movie's basis makes it harrowing from the get-go, as a film about the ways in which desperation can be corrupted and misused.
It's also, right from its opening scenes, a story about a victim — albeit a fictitious one — who is painted in nuanced and dynamic hues. Sonne often imbues Karoline with a short temper, making it hard for her to be liked but easy to be loved, knowing what she's going through at any given moment. The movie also spins a wildly interesting treatise on how violence and ugliness are treated in fiction, ideas that become magnified by its monochrome palette, as its most discomforting moments unfold just outside the camera's purview. We often want to know the gory details, but in crime-centric genres, what's often forgotten is the underlying humanity, a point made all the more lucid by telling Dagmar's story through the eyes of a victim.
This element of The Girl with the Needle is also mirrored by a supporting character left badly disfigured by the war, whose kindness is touching but who finds himself rejected by society at every turn. He's rejected by Karoline too, though her gradual, firsthand understanding of loss (of other people, and of the self) makes her slowly change her tune, until she's able to show him sympathy. The film's notions of violence and revulsion are both closely observed and deeply felt, but they're eventually untangled from one another when true ugliness is exposed from the shadows, making the day-to-day discomforts over people's appearances and demeanors seem entirely insignificant.
In framing Karoline's fictitious story against a very real, very sickening tale of brutality, The Girl with the Needle poses questions about what really draws us to stories of violence and criminality. More importantly, it provides a vital counter-narrative to how those stories can be told, and where their soul and poetry truly lie.
