The Young Woman with the Needle by Magnus von Horn created a shock wave at the Cannes Film Festival by dividing festival-goers. The story, inspired by a news item from the beginning of the 20th century, paints the portraits of two women in a way that is as aesthetic as it is grotesque. Karolina (Vic Carmen Sonne) and Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) who form an unhealthy alliance around baby adoptions that single mothers are looking to get rid of.
“This film is based on an atrocious historical fact to denounce the situation of women of the time but also of today,” explains the filmmaker to 20 minutes. The heroine, pregnant by her boss, is unable to abort. She chooses to have her child adopted to give him a better life. She puts her finger into a nightmarish spiral filmed in sublime black and white.
A personal story
“This subject affects me personally even though I am a man,” the director told 20 Minutes. I live in Poland, and in 2017 my wife had to have an abortion because our baby was sick. Although we are “pro choice”, it has been a terrible ordeal. » Since then, the country has banned abortion. “If this tragedy had happened today, we would have been forced to go abroad and we could have done it because we have the means. » The Young Woman with the Needle evokes, implicitly, those who are not so lucky. »
Our articles on Cannes are here
In the form of a flamboyant melodrama that calls on Zola and Dickens while flirting with horror cinema, this cruel fable makes you think about the notion of motherhood and that of choice. “My wife followed the creation of the film step by step,” insists Magnus von Horn. I don’t feel illegitimate in fighting to raise awareness about women’s rights and that is the primary goal of this film. »
Uncomfortable but not unfriendly
The Young Woman with the Needle offers its share of painful sequences before ending with a beautiful message of hope. “I am not pessimistic because I firmly believe that things can often work out. My heroines have been shaped by circumstances and I don’t feel the right to judge them. » It is undoubtedly for this reason that this sometimes awkward film is not unkind and that it could seduce the jury with its very stylized staging.