The Girl With The Nee­dle review – polit­i­cal­ly per­ti­nent Goth­ic hor­ror story

It helps to have some vague styl­is­tic or the­mat­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for choos­ing to shoot your mod­ern film in black and white. Mag­nus von Horn’s The Girl with the Nee­dle thank­ful­ly has both, in its goth­ic, cre­pus­cu­lar depic­tion of World War One-era Copen­hagen, as well as its rogues gallery of tor­tured mis­cre­ants who live by an aggres­sive­ly bina­ry and per­son­al­ly-ascribed form of moral­i­ty. This is a sto­ry in which colour, radi­ance and vibran­cy have pur­pose­ful­ly been sapped from the menu, lest the res­olute bleak­ness of the lives it cap­tures be dilut­ed in any way.

We meet Karo­line (Vic Car­men Sonne), a dit­sy but strong­willed seam­stress, as she’s being tossed out of her sin­gle-room apart­ment for unpaid rent. It tran­spires that her hus­band went off to war and, due to an under­stand­able com­mu­ni­ca­tions break­down, is now thought to be dead. A request for a sup­ple­ment on her mea­gre income leads to a back­street affair with the boss of the mill, yet her hopes of a new, afflu­ent future in his arms are swift­ly dashed. Her hus­band then returns, sport­ing a ter­ri­fy­ing mask to cov­er new­ly acquired facial dis­fig­ure­ments. Yet she is preg­nant with the boss’s child. At this point the film feels like a point­ed Vic­to­ri­ana-goth­ic homage to David Lynch’s The Ele­phant Man, but the moment that you think it, things jack­knife in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent direction.

The above descrip­tion cov­ers maybe the first 30 min­utes of plot, all of which is revealed to be nec­es­sary con­text for the film’s more baroque and har­row­ing sec­ond act in which Karo­line seeks the ser­vices of back­street facil­i­ta­tor Dag­mar (a sub­tly impos­ing Trine Dyrholm), who makes ends meet by rehous­ing babies for a healthy fee. Though there’s cer­tain­ly a tabloid intrigue to be found in its ​“inspired by true events” yarn, the real val­ue of the film is to be found in its wider socio-polit­i­cal con­cern in ques­tions sur­round­ing female bod­i­ly auton­o­my and the respon­si­bil­i­ties that are demand­ed from child-rear­ing. As such, there are nods to films such as Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake and Audrey Diwan’s Hap­pen­ing in how it presents a world in which a woman’s only real choice was to suf­fer the con­se­quences of a man’s errant actions and a government’s vio­lent indif­fer­ence. Which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is very much back in the headlines.

Von Horn’s writ­ing and direc­tion are mea­sured to fit the mate­r­i­al, while the sub­tle, unshowy ele­gance of Michał Dymek’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy are nev­er ramped up to the point that they usurp the nuances of the dra­ma. Yet it’s Sonne’s remark­able, mul­ti­far­i­ous per­for­mance that real­ly lifts this one above the pack. She uses her face with the expres­sive­ness of a silent film actress, so when the big emo­tions even­tu­al­ly come they hit espe­cial­ly hard.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.