Great movies are a balance between art and entertainment. Most movies tread too far into the “entertainment” category, sucking any and all personality from a film rendering it soulless and pointless. The Girl With the Needle is the rarer other direction. There’s no denying this movie knows what its doing and looks great doing it, but it’s not interested at all in how people are going to feel watching it. Or unwatching it, as this one’s gonna make people push the home button on their Roku or Apple sticks the most in 2024.
We’re down in the dumps immediately, as we learn Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is about to be evicted from her long lived in apartment with her missing WWI POW husband. To survive, she downgrades to a creepier place run by a wretched old landlady (Anna Tulestedt). She’s at least got a friend Frida (Tessa Hoder) and new love interest Jorgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) running the needle shop she works at. But she’s also pregnant, and barely surviving. Desperate one day, she considers the worst…but is stopped by Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) a mysterious older woman who tells Karoline to come by her candy shop to consider other options for her soon to be born child.
Writer director Magnus von Horn knows the bleak journey we’re about to go on, so he does the best he can to prepare us just how deep into the pits of hell we’re about to go. Black and white cinematography makes sense, immediately removing any sense of color and hope for poor Karoline. The scenes are still beautiful like our protagonist, but foggy and hazy around the edges, as the darkness creeps in. All the places of work and apartments are awash in black, not even grey, meaning no matter where Karoline goes, she’s trapped in darkness. The story then takes us step by step, further and further than we ever thought we’d go. There’s hidden hook ups in the alleys, leading to glimmers of hope – dashed by societal conventions. Now we have to go further: Karoline’s life is now spent around the circus, with damaged people that leave her in immediate peril as well as all her already long term hopelessness. All leading to the fateful decision the foreboding title portends…only to be pulled back by Dagmar.
And, get this, that’s the super happy fun time part of The Girl With the Needle. Dagmar’s candy shop resets, but also wrong foots, the audience into thinking this place, while flawed, is perfect for our flawed damaged Karoline, hoping to find some new start of some kind. The warning signs are there: Dagmar’s terse demeanor, reliance on opiates and ether to get through the day, young Erena’s (Avo Knox Martin) inhuman reactions to other desperate women like Karoline. These creeping doubts push Karoline to seek out answers. And then it happens. It’s one of those unforgivable movie sins that you’ll go with or shut out immediately. And worse, The Girl With the Needle reveals that this is the point of the movie, if not justifying, making people sympathize with what is actually happening here. After IT happens (and you’ll know immediately), I felt every good thing flee my body, leaving me in a fugue state for the rest of the movie. That unfeeling is not only scary but gross, and, and I cannot stress this enough, the POINT of The Girl With the Needle.
So prepare yourself accordingly to watch this “morality” play. Watch it early evening after dinner is digesting, but with enough time to decompress before you go right to sleep (between 7 and 8 PM start). Make sure you’re alone watching it, and you have someone you trust on a hotline to vent which you might need to do. Because by the end, you’ll be watching pure unadulterated art, in all its grotesque, worst case scenario for the sake of understanding and ickily, empathy. I don’t need watch The Girl With the Needle again, and if you ask me to watch it with you, I’m going to say no. But I will be your on call friend if you need it.