The Girl with the Needle

Directed by Magnus von Horn, The Girl with the Needle follows an impoverished young woman (Vic Carmen Sonne’s Karoline) as she attempts to overcome a series of hardships in post World War I Copenhagen – with the character eventually encountering (and working alongside) a shopkeeper (Trine Dyrholm’s Dagmar) offering a particular service to women in need. Filmmaker von Horn, armed with his and Line Langebek Knudsen, delivers a meandering and increasingly interminable drama that contains little in the way of accessible, agreeable attributes, as the movie, which crawls along an often astonishingly deliberate pace, boasts (or suffers from) a central character that could hardly be less compelling or more one-note – with Karoline’s egregiously passive nature preventing the viewer from working up much interest in or sympathy for her exploits. And while the film does build towards a shocking (yet far from surprising) twist in its second half, The Girl with the Needle has long-since confirmed its place as a thoroughly dull and uninvolving misfire that, it turns out, should’ve focused on Dyrholm’s intriguing character – which is a shame, ultimately, given that the film admittedly does contain a handful of engaging attributes (eg Michal Dymek’s consistently striking cinematography).

* out of ****