16/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Magnus von Horn’s macabre fairy tale for grown-ups is too pretty for its own good

Vic Carmen Sonne in The Girl with the Needle

This isn’t your usual bedtime story. During World War I, in Copenhagen, factory worker Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is struggling. Her husband might, or might not, be dead. She starts an affair with her gentle boss, gets pregnant, but nothing comes out of this new, perfect life – his mother makes sure of that. Alone, Karoline tries to get rid of her unborn child in a public bath. She hurts herself, badly, but another woman volunteers to help. Again – not your usual bedtime story.

There are other ways, says the kind-eyed Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm, fascinating). Karoline can just wait and give birth, and then bring her the baby. Some good people, doctors or lawyers, would be grateful to raise the kid as their own. But once it’s born, it’s better not to name it. “It’s just easier this way.”

In Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle [+see also:
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile], screening in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, everything is in place for the fairy tale to begin: there is the Beauty and the Beast, there is Prince Charming, and there is a Witch with tempting candy already in her hand (and her little shop of horrors). But everything is upside down, too. The Beast has lost its sanity – and half of its face – to war, Prince Charming is limping, and the Witch has the sweetest smile in this sad, sad city. The players are familiar, but there are no rules.

Except for one, it seems – things should look pretty. Horrible rooms with no running water are perfectly lit; abandoned, pregnant women-turned-wet nurses look positively angelic. When people repeat that thing about “seeing beauty in ugliness”, this is probably what they mean. But it’s a dangerous approach, as it can distract us from the story, and to a certain extent, this is what happens here. It becomes more of a stylised, black-and-white nightmare than a social commentary, just like The Painted Bird [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Václav Marhoul
film profile] a few years ago.

It is, to put it simply, hard to believe in that pain. Which is ironic, because pain is everywhere. Torture devices may differ, but filmmakers are just fascinated by suffering women. Why? That’s a question this reviewer has been asking herself for a while now, as a writer but also as a female viewer.

There is no doubt that von Horn’s new film – his third at Cannes after The Here After [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile] and Sweat [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile], which scored the so-called “Cannes label” during the pandemic – is very well made. The polished cinematography and unnerving score might simply be protecting the viewers. The same tale, told in Ken Loach’s stripped-down, modest way, could be unwatchable.

It still commits to the darkness, though, with unforgiving Polish abortion laws echoing in here somewhere, so loudly that they are practically bouncing off the walls – Swedish helmer von Horn is based in Poland – and with Dyrholm’s twisted fairy grandmother spelling out what everyone else is already thinking: “The world is a horrible place.” We need to believe that it’s not, she adds, but who can live “happily ever after” here after seeing what they have seen? They can try. They can live. Sometimes, it just has to be enough.

Written by Magnus von Horn and Line Langebek, The Girl with the Needle was produced by Nordisk Film Denmark, Nordisk Film Sweden and Poland’s Lava Films. Nordisk Film distributes it, while The Match Factory handles its sales.

Photogallery 16/05/2024: Cannes 2024 - The Girl with the Needle

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Tessa Hoder, Mariusz Włodarski, Besir Zeciri, Victoria Carmen Sonne, Trine Dyrholm
© 2024 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it