An atrocious, freely adapted true story, a reflection on the weight of patriarchy and class violence, a magnificent work on image: The Girl with the Needle, the new feature film by Swedish director Magnus von Horn, is all this and more.
The competition has produced its first shock film, which has divided the small, hushed world of critics… and which will certainly not go home empty-handed. With The Girl with the Needle (original title: Pigen med nåle), Swedish filmmaker Magnus von Horn – already present in the official selection of the Covid 2020 vintage with Sweat – draws freely on a tragic case that made headlines in Denmark at the beginning of the twentieth century. The story concerns serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who murdered 25 children between 1913 and 1920, against the backdrop of the First World War.
But this new work by the director from northern Europe is not just a “simple” screen adaptation of a sordid crime story. Instead, The Girl with the Needle attempts to analyze what drives its secondary character – since the main character is not the murderer, but a seamstress whose life has not been kind to her, and who finds herself caught in the clutches of the serial killer, a good intermediation process between the film and the viewer – to commit the irreparable on people who have just come into the world.
Admittedly, Magnus von Horn might have benefited from tightening up the first part of his two-hour film, which depicts the class and patriarchal violence suffered by working-class women in the first half of the twentieth century. But this lengthy introduction also ensures that the film doesn’t get bogged down in the facts of the case, even if we may wonder whether this ambition to take a step up doesn’t prove over-ambitious at times. In any case, The Girl with the Needle shines for the performance of its two actresses, its magnificent cinematography – its Director of Photography, Michał Dymek, is none other than the man who worked on Cold War – and its goldsmith sound work. A work we’d love to see leave the Croisette with an award.
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