I only started to hear some good word about The Girl With The Needle a month or so ago. Since then, it seemed to be snowballing from one positive review to the next, making it a very high priority on my watchlist. I am very glad, however, that I didn't decide to put any stock into how some people were trying to categorise it. I would say this is a psychological drama, a dark film with moments that will upset some people, but please try to approach it without thinking about any particular genre you may want it to be.
Vic Carmen Sonne plays Karoline, a woman in 1919 Copenhagen who is struggling to make ends meet. She has tried to claim payment as a widow, having not heard from her husband since he left for the war, but that's made harder by the fact that he has not been declared dead. Finding some small happiness in a relationship with her boss, Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), things are made even more difficult when Karoline falls pregnant. She and Jørgen have very different ideas on the viability of their relationship. As things become more and more dire for Karoline, she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm). Dagmar may be able to help her.
Director Magnus von Horn has an interesting filmography worth exploring, and The Girl With The Needle may well be his best film yet. Having helped to co-write it with Line Langebek Knudsen, there's a nice balance between the obvious darkness of unfolding events and how much viewers are actually shown. It's not heading toward any happy ending, clearly (and even more clearly to those familiar with the real-life inspiration for the tale), but there's still something about the placement of Karoline at the heart of everything that will have most people hoping for at least some silver lining in all of the gathering clouds.
While the performances are excellent across the board, with both Sonne and Dyrholm easily matched by young Ava Knox Martin (playing Erena, the daughter of Dagmar), it's a shame that Von Horn decided to keep the focus on the central strand of the story we follow to an inevitable conclusion that allows one character to deliver a brilliantly scathing comment about hypocrisy as they stand accused of the most heinous acts. I think the last scenes make the journey worthwhile, but there's also so much else that could have been done with the scenes that show Karoline and her husband (Peter, played by Besir Zeciri) in a world happy enough to use them up and then leave them on a fast-growing heap of discarded souls.
The cinematography from Michael Dymek is often gorgeous, but also offset with grit and darkness that befits the content, and everything onscreen feels authentic to the time and place being depicted. That sense of realism is essential, allowing viewers to think about everything in the context of everything else going on around the main characters, and the end credits will bring a palpable sense of relief too many who found themselves immersed in the film.
Falling just short of greatness, this is still very good stuff. I would recommend it to people who have an idea of what they're about to experience (and the title certainly implies something close to what you get, in my view). Possibly destined to fade away soon enough though. There's nothing here that's truly memorable enough to make me think that it will be cropping up in film conversations a year or two from now.
7/10
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