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‘The Girl With the Needle’ Review: Magnus von Horn’s Expressionistic Nightmare of Women Abandoned by Society
Magnus von Horn's 'The Girl With the Needle' is a terrifying, formally immaculate journey into the Stygian social margins of post-WWI Denmark.
That involuntary descent, to not just a grimy gutter but a near-Hadean underworld of human cruelty, is the chief horror in “ The Girl With the Needle,” Magnus von Horn ‘s extraordinary and upsetting new film — an adult fairytale abundantly populated with witches and wretches, but where society is revealed as the true monster. When Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the well-to-do factory owner, takes pity on her, they enter into a head-on affair — all-consuming enough that Karoline brusquely rejects Peter (Besir Zeciri), when he unexpectedly turns up at her door with a face brutally deformed in battle. In a startling performance, Dyrholm plays Dagmar with cold, fearsome composure, but also raised scars of long-stifled trauma and vulnerability: A different kind of fallen woman, she sees herself as sparing others a long, slow defeat by a society with no space or concern for them.
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