The rotten stench of post-war Denmark

After making a name for herself in European art-house cinema with the colorful and electric Sweat, which exposed the miseries of the world of influencers digital, the Swede Magnus von Horn now looks back on the past with lingering in the gloomy The Girl with the Needle, nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature Film for its portrayal of the moral darkness that spread through Denmark after the First World War. Marked by a precious scenic quality, the film finds its raison d'être in the rawness of its historical portrait, which encapsulates the emotional wounds of an entire continent in the disfigured faces of war veterans and in the study of the emergence of a network of clandestine adoptions.

Unfortunately, The Girl with the Needle He ultimately dismisses the possibility of rigorous study and weighs the historical background, preferring to outline a grotesque horror fable starring a pregnant young woman (a histrionic Vic Carmen Sonne) who struggles to survive surrounded by barbarism. The ambitious Von Horn has acknowledged the influence of two emblematic titles with which his film shares a contrasting black and white photography: The Elephant Man and Schindler's List. However, his calculated confection of an aesthetic of cruelty, prone to high-impact images, distances The Girl with the Needle of David Lynch's compassionate disposition and Steven Spielberg's humanist song.

[You can see the screenings in Catalan in this link]