The Girl with the Needle (2024)

For me, the title Pigen med Nålen immediately conjures the late 18th century Sturm und Drang play by Heinrich Leopold Wagner Die Kindermörderin (The Childmurderess). That brutal drama is about a woman made pregnant by a lover and then abandoned. She is, of course, treated as a whore and shunned from society. In despair, terrible poverty, and hunger, she goes mad and eventually murders her baby by shoving a hatpin into its brain. It's a wild and dynamic play (as are all of the plays from the Sturm und Drang) with an especially gruesome ending.

In other words, is there any way a movie called The Girl with the Needle is going to be about something other than murdered infants?

This movie is very good, but it is a very difficult watch, and I am not sure there is anyone I could recommend it to. Strangely, however, it has picked up rather a lot of traction for the Best International Feature Oscar. It is Denmark's pick for the big award, and it was named a finalist in mid-December. It has also earned itself a Golden Globe nomination and the National Board of Review named it one of the top six foreign films of the year.

The Girl with a Needle is a bleak social-problem film with a deeply troubling score (it's honestly brilliant). It's superbly acted (Trine Dyrholm is especially great), and it's filled with fucked up imagery and curious visual puzzles. I was into it, but this is gothic terror along the lines of last year's El Conde but without the satirical humor.