‘The Girl with the Needle’ overview: Women face the unthinkable

Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is totally alone in Copenhagen. She assumed her husband, Peter, had died within the Great War till he confirmed up unannounced and horribly disfigured: she pushed him away. No longer in a position to afford their condo, he rented a dingy, soiled room from a stern landlady. Karoline is pregnant, because of a short lived seek for pleasure, and this tough state of affairs has led her to lose her job in a textile manufacturing unit. And so, he feels that his solely alternative is to stay a knitting needle right into a public toilet, to attempt to inflict as a lot harm on himself as attainable to free himself from this downside.

She’s alone, till she is not anymore. A robust hand pulls her out of the water, presses a towel to the blood. Dagmar’s (Trine Dyrholm) clear eyes discover his. He has directions: Go to the physician if the bleeding does not cease. She will take the newborn when he’s born and discover him a pleasant foster household, docs and attorneys, good folks. Bring cash. As Dagmar and her younger daughter Erena (Avo Knox Martin) stroll Karoline residence, she locations a bag of sweets from her store within the younger girl’s hand. It’s one of many few acts of kindness we see Karoline obtain. She asks Dagmar why she helps her. “Who else would try this?” Dagmar replies.

“The Girl with the Needle”, the Danish entry for the worldwide Oscar, is directed and co-written by Swedish-Polish director Magnus von Horn. It does not promote itself as such, however it’s a movie about certainly one of Denmark’s most infamous serial killers, Dagmar Overbye, a caregiver convicted in 1921 of killing 9 youngsters (she could have killed as many as 25). The ladies introduced them victims, youngsters born out of wedlock, maybe one too many for a household or the mom too younger. Dagmar was introduced with an issue and she or he handled it, within the cruelest means.

For Von Horn and her Danish co-writer Line Langebek, what’s essential in Dagmar’s story isn’t Dagmar herself, however the social context that gave rise to her heinous crimes and the hypothetical ladies who might need discovered themselves in the dead of night embrace of Dagmar, like Karoline.

The world introduced by “The Girl with the Needle” is a newly industrialized postwar Denmark that’s not sort to many: staff, veterans and even rich aristocrats trapped in gilded cages, unwilling to threat cash or standing for happiness. But it is more durable for girls and kids, who bear the brunt of a society constructed on inequality, by which ladies lack entry to choices for the whole lot: jobs, sources, well being care, baby care.

The stark actuality of a interval piece like “The Girl with the Needle” is that it might present us one thing horrible from a century in the past, and in addition remind us that issues aren’t so totally different in our trendy world. Von Horn synthesizes the previous and current not solely in the subject material, however within the visible and sound model of the movie, making a sort of haunting previous and current.

Polish cinematographer Michal Dymek (“EO,” “A Real Pain”) captures the Dickensian squalor of cobbled streets, smoke-belching factories, rancid rented rooms, rickety staircases and grotesque spectacle circuses in high-octane black-and-white cinematography. excessive distinction that brings to thoughts classic images and German expressionism. (Sometimes, backlit close-ups virtually appear like tintypes.)

It’s a glance that speaks to the creative and cinematic actions of that period, but in addition feels trendy, as evident within the rating by Frederikke Hoffmeier, a Danish experimental noise musician who performs underneath the stage identify Puce Mary. His compositions mix buzzing dissonances, piano and strings to create a moody and evocative digital ambient rating that imparts a up to date flavour. The movie is a harrowing and disturbing horror story from one other time, though it feels surprisingly recent and all the time unpredictable.

Part of this unpredictability will depend on Sonne’s efficiency, which errs on the aspect of extreme. You by no means know the way he’ll react and whereas his massive eyes are sometimes darkish and unhappy, his expression unreadable, Dyrholm’s are vast and shiny, bordering on mania. Dyrholm is called “Denmark’s Meryl Streep” and delivers a fearless efficiency that’s each sympathetic to Dagmar’s previous and uncompromising about her crimes, making her a personality each terrifying and comprehensible. Dagmar’s world is an evil, ether-soaked vortex that sucks Karoline deeper into darkness and homicide.

“The Girl with the Needle” types a thematic trio this 12 months with two different worldwide function movies: “The Devil’s Bathroom” from Austria and “Vermiglio” from Italy, interval items about ladies struggling underneath an oppressive patriarchy , the place there isn’t any room for error, notably on the subject of being pregnant. All three movies provide a darkly transportive expertise in a distant time and place, with an emotional and social immediacy that resonates deeply within the current. Von Horn needs to point out us {that a} divided world is the cruelest of all, stuffed with the sort of inequality {that a} “monster” like Dagmar can produce.