I went into “The Girl With The Needle” expecting big things from it, even though I was essentially going in cold in regards to its story. I had read the (non-spoiler) ravings of a person who had seen the film at Cannes, and thought it sounded like a film that was right up my alley. However, during the opening few minutes, I had a nagging feeling that I was wrong and that I was going to end up hating the film instead. Thankfully, the more the film went along, and the more engrossed I got in its story, the more I liked it and by the end, I actually thought it was a fantastic film.
While I ultimately ended up thinking “The Girl With The Needle” was an impressive film, I must warn you that it is also one of the bleakest and most nihilistic films I have ever seen, and I think it would need to be a long time before I could watch it again. I would also have a hard time recommending it to anyone else due to how disturbing it is. Unfortunately, this is a film that gets its strength from knowing little about it beforehand and being surprised by the turns the story makes, so I will need to allude to things in this review rather than discuss them outright.
“The Girl With The Needle” is a film that starts at despair and just get darker from there until it becomes almost unbearable. That said, it has been put together beautifully and really is a brilliant piece of film making. Firstly, I want to make note of the very impressive acting from Trine Dyrholm, who plays Dagmar, the owner of a black market baby business that Karoline becomes involved in. I can say without giving too much away that Dagmar's lolly shop is really a front for her business where she accepts babies from young and poor women who cannot look after them themselves, and relocates them with rich families who, for whatever reason, cannot have children of their own. When we first are introduced to Dagmar, Dyrholm portrays her as this wholesome and caring middle aged woman, doing her best to help other women in their times of need. She is very proper, her hair perfectly done, and always dressed nicely. Dyrholm is entirely believable and relatable, but she exposes a darker, stricter edge to her character later on when she is behind closed doors. Dagmar is explicit in the fact that her business is just that, a business and as such, sentiment has no place there; sentiment can only cause trouble and heartache, so is seen only as both a weakness and a negative. She is so strict behind closed doors, that this once wholesome woman we were introduced to earlier, can now come across as even intimidating and a little scary. Dyrholm is excellent in every moment she is in, and ultimately steals the film.
I wasn't as impressed though by Vic Carmen Stone's lead performance, who plays Karoline, particularly during the earlier “happy” scenes when she is a seamstress (is this where the needle referred to in the title comes from?) and begins what will ultimately be a doomed romance. I am not sure why, maybe she is too mannered in these scenes, but her performance really grated on me. However, the darker the film got, the better Stone's performance got, and I thought she was really effective in the later scenes when Karoline's life is crumbling all around her, and she begins to struggle mentally to cope with it all. Stone really seemed to excel the more desperate Karoline and her situation becomes.
The look of “The Girl With The Needle” is just stunning. It is shot in a black and white impressionistic style, via very carefully composed and controlled images. Whilst the images themselves are gorgeous, paradoxically they expose the dirty, grimy world that the story takes place in. This is a cold, dark and bleak world, uninviting and dangerous to the women that inhabit it. I think the choice to film “The Girl With The Needle” in black and white was almost forced upon the filmmakers by the story itself, as it is so dark (particularly where it ends up at the end) that it would've felt wrong in colour and potentially too much for the viewer to handle. As great as the film looked, I did feel that there were a couple of “arty” shots that stood out (and worked against the film) because they went against the style of the rest of the film.
One aspect of “The Girl With The Needle” that should be mentioned is that this is a story about women. Almost all of the characters are women, and the few men that are there, are damaged and essentially useless. This makes sense from a narrative perspective as the story takes place just after the end of World War I, so most of the men have been killed and those who have returned are both physically and mentally scarred. Karoline's husband is one such figure, one of the “lucky” ones to return from the war, but who has such a severe facial injury, that he is forced to wear a tin mask over his face at all times (which is a brilliantly macabre image). Sadly his only chance of employment post-war is as a “freak” at the local circus. So the story of “The Girl With The Needle” is largely absent of men, and is about women doing whatever it takes to survive in an already bleak world (which is pretty rare in cinema).
I am not sure how to discuss the very disturbing final half an hour of “The Girl With The Needle”, as it certainly isn't for the faint of heart, and yet from memory, I cannot remember any walk outs during my session (which these kinds of scenes often instigate). I will say that my mouth was left agape at where the film headed and I found myself physically uncomfortable during certain scenes, to the point where I was squirming in my seat, which is very unusual for me to have such a reaction (the desensitised bastard that I am). What made it worse was when the film ended, just before the credits rolled, a card came up that read “based on true events”. Furthermore, the MIFF guide mentions that it is based on one of Denmark's most infamous [criminal] cases. To think that any of this actually happened in real life is just chilling.
Overall, whilst I initially struggled with “The Girl With The Needle” in its early scenes, I ended up onboard with the film quickly and by the end of it, I thought it was a fantastic film, however I was sufficiently shocked by how dark the tale was. I am so happy that I knew very little about the film before I saw it and recommend going into the film cold for viewers who can handle very disturbing material. If you feel you can, you will get a brilliantly directed tale about women's survival, that's gorgeously photographed with a stunning performance from Trine Dyrholm. It is an incredibly confronting film, but definitely worth it for brave audiences.
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