The Girl With The Needle - Movie Review

Critics Score - 9 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

Back in the 1910’s, before and through The Great War, subsequently known as World War 1, a Danish woman named Dagmar Overbye became a notorious criminal. What she became notorious for, I will not speak about here, for the sake of spoilers. But know that her crimes got her the death penalty which was then reduced to life in prison. The new film from Mubi, The Girl With The Needle, is not about Dagmar, but it does have a character based on her in the film. Again, without spoiling anything, this film goes to some very dark and disturbing places, it will not be for everyone. With that being said, there is some incredible filmmaking on display here. I’ve seen some beautiful cinema in 2024 including Maria, Nosferatu and Nickelboys. This film surpasses them. There are so many shot compositions in this film that take your breath away, I probably sounded like an asthmatic while watching it with how much I was gasping. The screenplay is also a thing of beauty, its structure slowly unfolding to offer us more information about our central protagonist and the people that come into and out of her life. While it is in spoken Danish, don’t let that deter you from catching this one coming soon on Mubi. There are several films very likely to be nominated for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards. I’ve seen most of them and this was my favorite film of them all, not only in terms of the visuals, but the filmmaking, acting and story as a whole. Pound for pound, you’ll have a hard time stitching up a better piece of international cinema this year than The Girl With The Needle.

SYNOPSIS - As this movie begins, we open with some high tempo violin strumming, the type of music most films use to create tension and unease. The screen shows us a montage of faces, each one appearing white against the dark background. A light passes by, left to right in front of the faces, illuminating them at different angles as it moves back and forth. The faces are fluid, changing, sometimes looking twisted or disfigured, almost as if they’re a compilation of sketches in the sequence. Eventually the sketches begin to appear in an overlapping pattern, the faces start appearing with multiple sets of eyes, sometimes grinning or screaming, the fuel of nightmares. We begin our tale in Copenhagen, the year is 1919, World War One is a wrap but the after effects are reverberating through Europe. We finally get our first actual shot of the main protagonist, we’re introduced to Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), she stands with her back mostly to the camera as she’s washing her hands at a bathroom sink. She wears a nightgown, gets her hands soapy as she continues washing under her arms, her neck and begins wiping her face on a towel when there’s a knock on the door. It is her landlord, a middle aged man, he informs her that he needs her to move out, he has to rent her apartment to someone else.

Despite her pleas that she’ll get him some money and to let her stay, she’s fourteen weeks behind on the rent and he continues with his plans of showing the room to some new tenants. Inside her bedroom, from a jar, she procures three and a half weeks rent and tries to convince him she’ll pay him the rest, but he’s not interested in making any deal with her. Soon there is a woman in a nice hat and her young daughter in her apartment, Karoline stands idly by as they look around in the main bedroom, full of her belongings. 

After the landlord tells them a few things about the apartment, as the young daughter watches her, Karoline begins telling them that there are rats. “Big ones. They come out at night. When you’re asleep, they bite your feet”, she says as the little girl’s eyes go wide with fear. The child begins to whine to her mother, asking to go home, that she doesn’t like it there, which at first goes ignored as the woman looks around the room. Finally she grows tired of hearing the young one and slaps her hard in the face. The girl recoils, then slowly looks up to face her mother. A drop of blood comes from her nose and the woman hands the child a handkerchief.

The landlord asks Karoline if she has a place she can go, to which she says she does not, so he says he’ll arrange to get her a room she can afford. We then watch as she gets dressed and heads to work, she sows garments at a textile factory, they produce uniforms for the war. A supervisor comes by and complains that she’s holding up the production line to which she responds, “The needle keeps breaking”. Later on she goes to look atnew accommodations. She is shown a dirty room by an old lady, there’s a puddle of water in the floor, but she has nowhere else to go so she accepts the pitiful place and after her new landlord leaves, she goes and sits on a bucket to urinate. The conditions of the time, the dirty lifestyle and bleak outlook of so many people that lived through the era are highlighted by the black and white images on the screen. Everything seems unsanitary and the worldview is forlorn.

At work the next day, the handsome owner of the company Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), meets with her as she’s requested a widow supplement, apparently her husband went to fight in the war and is currently missing in action. The two seem to like each other and eventually they begin seeing each other, things seem to be looking up for out struggling protagonist. Alas, the screenplay has much more sinister thoughts in mind and as things play out for Karoline, eventually her fortunes, or misfortunes if you will, take her into the company of Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), the woman I mentioned at the outset of the review. But despite all the harrowing aspects of the story, the dark, moody and disconcerting areas the film explores come together in the end to produce a cinematic experience you likely won’t soon forget.

As mentioned, one of the first things noticeable about the film is the striking visuals. The director of photography, Michał Dymek previously worked on the Oscar nominated Polish film from a couple years ago, EO. But here, in this black and white landscape, he has really outdone the work from even that gorgeous film. I kept having to scrape my jaw off the floor with the stunning imagery he captures here. Alongside the aesthetics of the film, the script from Line Langebek Knudsen really shines. With the main characters arc and journey being cleverly crafted to always have a twist or turn ready to keep the viewer engaged, the two hour run breezes by. The editing and pacing is also excellent. Without over staying it’s welcome, we move through the different periods of this fictional woman’s life with little lag and finally into the dark depths of factual WW1 era history, tied into the main protagonist’s central storyline. The direction from Magnus Von Horn is assured, although I’ve not seen anything else from him, now I’m very curious to watch his previous film that’s also on Mubi, Sweat. The lead performance by Vic Carmen Sonne is excellent, her facial expressions of a “spinster in the making”, to quote Pride And Prejudice, make you really root for her to find happiness once you see her get a taste of it. Trine Dyrholm also offered a strong supporting role as a woman who takes in the main character but whose life and intentions are also shrouded in mystery. All in all, I found this film extremely effecting and haunting in what it was doing on numerous levels, so much so it managed to make its way into my top 5 films of 2024.

SUMMARY - Because of the content this film delves into in the final act, it really won’t be a film that many people return to over and over again, maybe similar to The Zone Of Interest from last year. But you might just find the well constructed narrative and plot twists of The Girl With The Needle getting its hooks into you by the time it’s all said and done.