Despite retaining some of the same creative team, the three films made so far by Magnus Von Horn have been strikingly different from each other. The director's Sweden-set debut fiction feature, The Hereafter, which I saw at Gydnia 10 years ago, about a teenager's return to his hometown following incarceration for a crime, was deliberately low-key, its measured mood disrupted by jarring violence; it was accomplished and slightly studied, with Dardennes and Haneke touches. Von Horn followed it up with Sweat (2020), a portrait of a Polish Instargram influencer, which was brisk and colourful, and aggressively contemporary.
Von Horn clearly adapts himself to his subjects, and his latest film is something different yet again: a black-and-white maternal melodrama that plays out with the horrifying dream logic of a dark fairy-tale for adults. Set in between-the-wars Copenhagen, The Girl With the Needle (Pigen med nålen) is based on a real-life case: the social period details feel right - the factory work, the shops, the dingy dwellings - but, from the opening sequence of contorted, superimposed faces, Von Horn goes for something more primal and ambient, and sustains a mood of quiet, creeping dread. The result is a compelling piece of work, and his best film to date.
As the working-class mother who gives up her baby, and as the woman who arranges for its care, Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm give richly detailed performances; playing the latter's daughter, young Avo Knox Martin is a remarkable find. Coming off of EO (2022) and A Real Pain (2024), the amazing DP Michał Dymek returns to black-and-white for the first time since My Friend the Polish Girl (2018), and gives the images a hallucinatory depth and clarity. Frederikke Hoffmeier's score is mostly an asset too, though some twitchy electronics feel misjudged. The sound of crying babies is perhaps the most eloquent noise here; it permeates the film, and, like many of the images, returns to haunt the viewer long after the screening.
The Girl With the Needle is in cinemas now.
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