‘The Girl with the Needle’ movie review: a pointless and exploitative “horror” about female pain
We live in an age of biopics, pointless adaptations and pointless true stories that are squeezed onto the big screen for no reason besides that of lining the pockets of greasy studio executives. But when I first heard that The Girl with the Needle was based on a true story and being distributed by Mubi, the saviour of independent cinema, I felt cautiously optimistic. Perhaps there would be a point to this tale that would inject purpose into these meaningless storytelling trends. But alas, I left the cinema feeling depleted and enraged, and the age-old sentiment of ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’ sprang to mind.
The Girl with the Needle follows a young woman called Karoline, a factory worker who finds herself pregnant and unable to care for the child. In her desperate state, she meets a woman named Dagmar, who runs a backstreet adoption agency, helping mothers find new homes for their unwanted children.
It may sound like an interesting concept, but it is executed with about as much nuance as a woman in a Michael Bay movie. While some have described it as a horror about motherhood, I couldn’t find one semblance of meaning amongst the pristine black and white exterior. The plot unravels as a convoluted mess, following Karoline from one bad situation to the next, coming across as a relentless trauma dump as the writer conjures new ways for this woman to suffer, with no care into constructing a thematic undercurrent that could help create meaning from each situation.
The director attempts to use female pain to add weight to the story, but unfortunately, it comes across as empty and vapid, with nothing interesting being said about womanhood, motherhood or suffering. Given the insufferable male gaze that persists throughout the film, it is unsurprising that he cannot add a considered reflection of the subject matter, creating a deeply unnecessary and exploitative story.
Again, just because something happened in real life, does not mean that the story needs to be shared, and this feels particularly relevant in regards to The Girl and the Needle. After hours of meandering storylines, as Karoline is dumped from one nightmare to the next, we eventually learn that Dagmar is killing the babies she has been taking into her care. However, the exposition before we arrive at this point is unbearably long-winded and pointless, leaving me wondering what the purpose of the film is. Is it supposed to be a horror about these murders? Or is Dagma’s storyline a backdrop to the struggles of Karoline? It isn’t clear, but after dwindling into a poorly constructed murder trial, I quickly grew very frustrated.
The Girl with the Needle is an endless stream of misery porn, with a number of deeply problematic tropes that only highlight its narrative confusion. At one point, Karoline’s husband returns from the war wearing a mask to cover his disfigured face. This happens fairly early on in the movie, so I initially assumed that the film would be about their relationship as he returns to post-war Copenhagen. However, after cropping up for a few scenes in which he is bullied and cruelly harassed by everyone around him, he then disappears, and his character doesn’t become relevant to the story at all.
I was completely flummoxed. Why go to all this effort to introduce a character and then abandon him entirely? The mocking of his appearance felt cruel and completely irrelevant, with his disfigurement being used for shock value, and in this day and age, I’m shocked that people are still using this insulting and ableist trope.
Overall, it is an unsophisticated and clumsy story, making a parade out of female misery with a misogynistic ending that implies motherhood is inevitable and that your right to choose is null and void, with Karoline eventually adopting a child even after expressing that she doesn’t want children. Apparently, this is supposed to be heart-warming and endearing. Something about the maternal instinct being so strong that we cannot resist it. Yawn. Another pile of pseudo-intellectual arthouse rubbish.
