The Girl with the Needle draws from one of the most heinous murder cases in Danish history, yet director Magnus von Horn (Sweat, The Here After) isn’t interested in retreading a familiar serial killer biopic ground. Telling a story inspired by Dagmar Overby presents fertile ground for horror, but Dagmar’s chosen victims were children and babies, making for murkier territory to traverse. Instead, von Horn smartly navigates the treacherous pitfalls of this serial killer tale with thoughtful empathy, framing the story from a broader perspective for a timely, gothic tale of hardship for society’s forgotten and discarded.
Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a young seamstress working in a Copenhagen factory, struggles to survive after her husband was declared missing in action during WWI. No recovered body means she’s without any supplemental support from the government, and her single income isn’t enough to keep the rent paid. Even when her boss, Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), offers the necessary support to keep her off the streets, a series of unexpected obstacles and misfortunes leaves her even worse off than before. So much so that she winds up attempting to self-abort with a needle at a public bathhouse until kind candy store owner Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) intervenes with promises of her talent to match unwanted babies with financially stable adoptive parents. The connection formed by the two women, both on the outskirts of society, unwittingly puts them on an irrevocable, cataclysmic path that will change their lives.
Von Horn, who co-wrote the screenplay with Line Langebek, keeps the focus on Karoline, painstakingly immersing viewers in her constant barrage of adversity. It’s here, surprisingly, where von Horn infuses the most horror in this gothic period drama. Michal Dymek‘s stunning, crisp black and white photography captures production designer Jagna Dobesz‘s gothic, industrial vision of Copenhagen, oppressive and gloomy in Karoline’s corner of it. Combined with von Horn’s German expressionistic composition, The Girl with the Needle transforms from simple biopic into a beguiling dark fairy tale of sorts. That’s at its most visually gripping with the sudden return of Karoline’s husband, Peter (Besir Zeciri), horribly disfigured by the war to the point where the sight induces instant recoil from everyone around him. The stark imagery tied to Peter is evocative, a powerful tool at von Horn’s disposal to convey the true horrors of this world and how it shapes the vulnerable.
The brooding slow build does eventually get to the truth behind Dagmar’s grim acts, with every bit of shock and horror you’d expect, but von Horn doesn’t dwell on it. This isn’t the story he’s telling, after all. This is Karoline’s story, and Sonne plays her with an intriguing blend of aloofness and vulnerability. Von Horn paints a stark portrait of a woman without much in the way of a future, support, or options for escape. The filmmaker employs horror techniques to heighten the severity of Karoline’s plight, with Sonne playing the unconventional protagonist with childlike resilience and temperament. It’s the perfect compliment to the steely, cunning Dagmar, a ruthless type hardened by circumstance but with enough humanity that draws the fellow broken to her.
Realism meets nightmare expressionism in The Girl with the Needle, a stunning biopic that dabbles with horror and horror techniques to present a grim yet timely tale of society’s discarded and the disturbing lengths they’re forced to undergo to cope and survive. There’s a tremendous empathy for the downtrodden, with so much backstory building to the fateful connection between broken women that its length is felt. The second act is prone to drag. But it’s less a serial killer biopic and more of a haunting, perceptive portrait of reality, told with exquisite form.
The Girl with the Needle screened at TIFF with release info TBD.
The post ‘The Girl with the Needle’ Review – A Gothic Portrait of Empathy and a Serial Killer [TIFF] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
source https://bloody-disgusting.com/reviews/3831405/the-girl-with-the-needle-review-a-gothic-portrait-of-empathy-and-a-serial-killer-tiff/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-girl-with-the-needle-review-a-gothic-portrait-of-empathy-and-a-serial-killer-tiff
No comments:
Post a Comment