The Girl with the Needle, the latest feature from Swedish director Magnus von Horn, premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, to great acclaim. Loosely based on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, this fictionalized tale features gripping performances from Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm as two women caught in a disturbing web of strange intimacies and unimaginable horrors in post WWI Copenhagen.
Well served by its expressive black and white photography and disquieting score (kudos to cinematographer Michal Dymek and composer Frederikke Hoffmeier), the film plunges the audience into the depths of darkness with a jaw droppingly layered opening sequence that alone is worth the price of admission. Leaping from nightmarish abstraction to the all too mundane horror of everyday life, we watch as our protagonist Karoline (Sonne) suffers one terrible indignity after another. With her husband missing in action, and unable to afford the rent on her own, the headstrong seamstress is kicked out of her Copenhagen apartment and forced to move into a hovel that hardly seems fit for human habitation. Beseeching her handsome employer Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) for help, she instead quickly finds herself in the throes of an illicit affair.
Naively believing her whole life is about to change, she is horrified when her husband returns, hiding a horrific facial disfigurement with a mask. She runs him off, hoping to forget him and carry on with her fantastical but clearly doomed relationship. When she learns she’s pregnant, a joyous Jørgen agrees to marry her, but when forced to choose between his lover and the family fortune, he makes the obvious choice, barely bothering to feign hesitation. Adding insult to injury, his mother unceremoniously fires Karoline from her job, leaving her with no means to support herself, or her unborn child.
At the end of her rope, she takes the titular needle in hand, and attempts to give herself an abortion in a public bathhouse. It’s at this vulnerable moment that she encounters Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who both saves her from herself, and offers her an alternative. Dagmar, it seems, runs an adoption agency of sorts. For a fee, she places unwanted children with loving, prosperous families, and offers to do just this for Karoline once the baby is born. Karoline seems skeptical, but struggles through the rest of her pregnancy, and when she eventually gives birth (mid-shift, on a pile of potatoes) she feels she has no other option but to give the child up to Dagmar, hopeful that her baby might have a better life than her own.
Soon, finding herself unexpectedly drawn to the charismatic older woman, Karoline begs her for a job as a wet nurse. For some reason, Dagmar agrees, and Karoline moves in with her and her strangely unsettling young daughter, Erena (Ava Knox Martin). As the days pass in a series of morphine dreams painted in shades of Buñuel, the women grow closer, and Dagmar lets Karoline care for one of the baby boys in her charge as a reward for her helpfulness. One night, a jealous Erena tries to smother the baby, and Karoline slaps her in a moment of rage. In retaliation for her transgression, Dagmar packs the baby up to be taken to his new family and storms out. When a despondent Karoline follows her benefactor through the streets, she finally learns the horrifying truth as she witnesses Dagmar take the child’s life and dispose of his body in an open sewer.
With Karoline (and the audience) unable to ignore the truth, the film barrels toward its dramatic conclusion. Karoline confronts Dagmar and receives an admission, if not exactly an expression of guilt. Convinced she is simply doing what is necessary, she does not appear to feel such emotions. Often shot in silhouette, Dagmar feels somehow faceless and unknowable. Perhaps that is why Horn chose to examine this tale through the eyes of the fictional Karoline, in many ways the audience’s proxy. Declining to make Dagmar his protagonist, he facilitates a more intellectually removed dissection of the worst of humanity’s darkness, and the masks we wear to hide it.
The Girl with the Needle lands in Canadian cinemas on December 6th.
© 2020-2024. UniversalCinema Mag.