The Girl With the Needle (2024) review

Seamstress Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) has a tough time in early 20th century Denmark: she can't pay her rent, her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri) returns from the war with a disfigured face (and eventually joins the circus as a freak), she's been impregnated by her employer Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) except his family won't permit them to be married, and then she works for confectioner Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who's addicted to ether and runs a secret side hustle "supposedly" finding new families for unwanted newborns.  The onslaught of misery is unfortunately unrelenting and becomes exhausting well before the movie finishes up, and the most complex individual in it, Dagmar, appears much later and she's not even the main character (she's based on an actual serial killer who targeted babies).  What's really baffling is its position when it comes to the pro-life/pro-choice debate: since physician-assisted abortion isn't an option, Karoline attempts to use a long needle to terminate her own pregnancy which doesn't work ... and then she's distraught that Dagmar "took care of the problem."  And yet, the "uplifting" final minute has Karoline adopting Dagmar's "only child" Erena (Avo Knox Martin).  So what is it?  Is existence such a nightmare that reproduction is a curse?  Or should we continue the human species no matter how stark things become?