Content warning: facial disfigurement, PTSD, drug use, attempted abortion with a knitting needle, infanticide, child abuseI am so serious about these warnings.
Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) works as a seamstress making war uniforms but not making enough to cover her rent. She applies for a widow's stipend since she hasn't heard from her husband (Besir Zeciri) in over a year, but there's no record of him. She has an affair with her wealthy boss (Joachim Fjelstrup) and thinks the resulting pregnancy is her ticket out of poverty but surprise! It's not. Desperate and poor, Karoline tries to self-abort in the baths but is prevented by Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a candy shop owner, who offers to take the baby and find a foster home if Karoline carries to term. Since Karoline also needs a job after being fired by her Baby Daddy, she goes to work for Dagmar as a wet nurse, caring for the abandoned infants until they can be placed. Things seem to be on the upward swing until she discovers what Dagmar is actually doing.
The Academy decided to embrace Women's Horror this year. I'm still sad they didn't pick The Devil's Bath, which is almost the exact same movie, but I can guess why this one made the cut instead. **DEEPLY CYNICAL SPECULATION AND ALSO MAYBE SPOILERS** GwtN has an ostensibly happy ending (because she reconciles with her husband and adopts Erena, creating a stereotypical heteronormative family) and TDB does not. Karoline shows remorse but lets Dagmar take the fall alone and faces zero consequences for her part while Agnes confesses and is executed. Both are deeply tragic but GwtN pushes the horror onto a scapegoat and that one step away creates enough emotional distance for Academy voters to feel virtuous, instead of forcing them to confront the ways society has historically failed and punished women for existing, where TDB keeps the focus on Agnes, refusing to look away. Also, the Academy fucking loves war and war-adjacent movies and dramatic uses of black-and-white film. **END SPECULATION AND SPOILERS**
Every year, there's at least one film that is such a depressing slog it wrecks my timeline for watching. This movie cost me three solid days. It is unrelentingly bleak and I cannot stress the content warnings enough. Do not put your mental health at risk for this. It's streaming on Mubi, a stupidly named niche arthouse service, exclusively for now.
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