The year is 1945 and the country is Denmark. The nation is technically neutral, however the wounds of World War 2 are conspicuous. Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) supports the effort with her hands: she operates a sewing machine, helping to create uniforms for the neighbouring nations. Her rich and good-looking boss impregnates and promises to marry her, yet their plans suddenly change dafter her formidable mother-in-law-to-be steps on her way. To make things worse, the husband whom she presumed dead returns with an iron mask and a horrific facial disfigurement beneath it.

After many twists of fate, Karoline ends up jobless and with a baby on her arms. She attempts an abortion with a giant needle and nearly kills herself. Middle-aged Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) helps to stop the bleeding. She gives her baby to the kind stranger in the hope that the nameless child will end up with a loving foster family. Dagmar runs a clandestine adoption agency. Karoline moves in with her unexpected saviour and her seven-year-old daughter Erena (Ava Knox Martin), who turns out to be not as kind and generous as she first seemed. In fact, she possesses a very perverse sense of solidarity.

The first half of the The Girl with the Needle evokes David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1980): the surrealist body horror, the chiaroscuro photography, horrific face disfigurement, and empathy for the marginalised. Both films are an ode to freaks, ghouls, and outcasts.

The second half of the movie is dominated by Dyrholm’s character, as the topic shifts from failed motherhood to a very Scandinavian type of nihilism. Dagmar boasts a self-proclaimed sense of heroism, guided by the belief that the world is a very bad place. This drives her to extreme measures, ultimately making the older woman the most important film character. She is the one responsible for the big, shocking twist at the end of the movie (based on the life of Dagmar Overbye, two decades earlier). What started out as a Lynchian fable ends up as a far more macabre story of tragedy and hopelessness. There is a strong topic parallel with the Austrian film The Devil’s Bath (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala), which premiered earlier this year in Berlin: both movies are shocking, real stories from the past involving women, babies, and a very warped notion of redemption. I can’t tell you more without spoiling both films for you.

The production values are impeccable. The black-and-photography is sharp and clear, vaguely reminiscent of German expressionism. The gingerly crafted mise-en-scene transports viewers right into the heart of post-War Europe, bang in the middle of the 20th century. The nerve-wrecking score adds the perfect touch of horror to this disturbing fantasy drama. On the other hand, this is a movie torn between priorities: Karoline’s disastrous predicament versus Dagmar’s desire to fix the world through very questionable means. Instead of complementing one other, these two personal stories compete with each other. The Girl with the Needle isn’t a watershed in the history of film. It lacks the surrealist magnificence of Eraserhead, and punch-in-the-face factor of The Devil’s Bath. But it will still enrapture and shock you.

The Girl with the Needle premiered in the Official Competition of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Also showing in the 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.