Cannes 2024 Movie Round-Up (Part 1)

Reviews for 'The Girl with the Needle,' 'Kinds of Kindness,' 'Ghost Trail,' 'Bird,' 'Oh, Canada,' and 'The Second Act'

Hunters,

I am absolutely jamming here at Cannes, packing in about 3 movies a day to bring you fine folks trustworthy reviews and on-the-ground coverage. If you’re not yet following along on Instagram, TikTok, or Letterboxd, I encourage you to do so and enjoy.

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Now let’s talk about some movies.

Here’s a round-up of what I watched in my first few days at Cannes, including reviews for the buzzy new Yorgos Lanthimos movie starring Emma Stone, Andrea Arnold’s heralded Bird, a new Paul Schrader film starring Jacob Elordi and Richard Gere, and more.

And if you missed my spoiler-free Megalopolis review, check it out here.

No spoilers throughout

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The Girl with the Needle (Denmark) - Magnus Von Horn

Logline: Copenhagen 1919: A young worker finds herself unemployed and pregnant. She meets Dagmar, who runs an underground adoption agency. A strong connection grows, but her world shatters when she stumbles on the shocking truth behind her work.

Category: Palme d’Or Competition

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The Girl with the Needle, a terrifying Danish period drama based on a true story, sets the mood with a haunting opening. In boxy 3-2 aspect ratio, over throbbing violins, black and white faces overlap and morph, creating uncanny and grotesque masks. 

From then on, director Magnus Von Horn holds us suffocatingly tight as he unspools a dark fairy tale that seems to take inspiration from the original Nightmare Alley and Elephant Man while also being an intensely contemporary look at pregnancy. 

It’s Copenhagen during the twilight of World War I, a moment trapped peculiarly between the medieval and the modern, where smokestacks and cobblestone streets exist equally. Our protagonist is a fidgety young seamstress named Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) who is struggling to make ends meet because her soldier husband is MIA. Sonne is a unique and expressive actress, contorting her dangerously feral face to communicate multiple feelings at once.

Vic Carmen Sonne

Karoline gets knocked up by her handsome boss, and they plan a shotgun wedding, but the boss’ mother (the real boss) forbids this, leaving Karoline alone and pregnant. Complicating matters is the fact that Karoline’s husband has returned, except he is severely scarred and taken to wearing a horrifying prosthetic mask and performing in circus freak shows. 

With nowhere to go and no clue what to do with her new baby, Karoline turns to a with-it candy-shop owner, Dagmar, played by Trine Dyrholm, who I learned is basically the Meryl Streep of Denmark, who works on the side finding new, affluent homes for unwanted children. But things are not all what they seem, especially when Dagmar makes Karoline breastfeed her 7-year-old daughter…

Von Horn with stars Dyrholm (L) and Sonne (R)

That’s the first and definitely not last indication that we’ve entered the proverbial witch’s house. The Girl with the Needle is a miserable, non-stop train to nightmare town, and while the film heads in an unsurprising direction, it still manages to shock and make your stomach drop out. 

That’s a credit to The Girl with the Needle’s unrelenting and unified vision and tone, rock-solid across the stunning visuals, the magnificent lead performances (two of the best I’ve seen at the festival), and the violins-gone-rotten score by Frederikke Hoffmeier. And the ending provides a lifeline—the tiniest sliver of light at the end of a dark tunnel, a hopeful grace note. 

Star Trine Dyrholm (C) and director Magnus Von Horn (R)

At most screenings here, people rush out of the theater, but when The Girl with the Needle ended, the audience remained seated, hollowed out, and shell-shocked. As we all eventually exited the theater, everyone had the same dead-eyed look, like we just went through hell and back. And while I wouldn’t rewatch this bleak film anytime soon, it really is the full package.

Verdict:

The Girl with the Needle is a haunting and gripping Danish period drama that immerses viewers in its unrelenting nightmare with stunning performances and a unified, terrifying vision.

Grade: 84

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Kinds of Kindness - Yorgos Lanthimos

Logline: A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife's demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.

Category: Palme d’Or Competition

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I sat through the dreamy triptych Kinds of Kindness, unable to attune to its peculiar wavelength, feeling alienated by the abrasive and austere film. This is Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to Poor Things, and it’s more in line with his earlier work like Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, even employing the same screenwriter of those films, Efthimis Filippou. 

The movie opens with the pounding synth of The Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams,” and the warm press audience was clapping right along. The surreal and subconscious are central to Kinds of Kindness, as it feels like Yorgos is dumping his dark, provocative dream journal onto the screen. 

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