Get the latest gossip

'The Girl With the Needle' Review: A dark, urgently timely Danish drama about an unwanted pregnancy at a time when abortion was illegal

The Palme d'Or competitor from Magnus von Horn centers on the vulnerability of pregnant women at a time when abortion was illegal and other options few and far between.

Danish actress Vic Carmen Sonne ( Holiday, Godland) offers an understated but multi-layered performance as Karoline, a vulnerable but resilient seamstress living in post-WWI/early-1920s Copenhagen, who is left high and dry when her wealthy lover (Joachim Fjelstrup) gets her knocked up but won’t marry her. Shot digitally, in black and white and using a claustrophobic 3:2 ratio by rising cinematographer Michal Dymek ( A Real Pain, EO), the film has the haunted, eerily still poise of antique photographs, an aesthetic that will delight cineastes but may prove a hard sell commercially, especially given the grimness of the topic. Although she has a job working at a local clothing factory making uniforms (sewists and textile machinery geeks will be fascinated to see the workers operating vintage hand-cranked machines while standing up, all recreated on a stage set), she’s getting no income from her husband Peter who went off to fight for the allies in WW1 and hasn’t been heard from in months.

Get the Android app