Originally Published on Sean Kelly on Movies on December 7, 2024
This Review Contains SPOILERS
A struggling woman in post-WWI Copenhagen is taken in by a confectioner running a side business taking unwanted babies in The Girl with the Needle. In the dying days of the first World War, seamstress Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is suddenly evicted from the apartment she shared with her MIA husband Peter (Besir Zeciri). Karoline finds some solstice when she enters into a new relationship with her boss Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup). However, the happiness is short-lived when Peter unexpectably returns from the war, now with a horribly disfigured face, and Jørgen is forced by his baroness mother to end his relationship with Karoline, and fire her from the sowing factory, after she becomes pregnant with Jørgen’s baby.
Not wanting to keep the baby, Karoline attempts to abort the pregnancy in a public bathhouse using a giant needle. Karoline is saved from seriously harming herself by middle-aged woman Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who offers to take Karoline’s baby after birth and find a foster family. When Karoline is unable to afford the fee for Dagmar’s services, she offers to work for the woman as a wet nurse. However, as time goes by, Karoline discovers the horrifying truth of what Dagmar does with the unwanted babies.
