el-Toukey’s measured thriller is a haunting tale of one woman’s quiet scramble for survival.
The oppressive forces and ghosts of World War II have long been fertile ground for cinematic richness. While period pieces of this ilk can feel familiar, director May el-Toukey manages to offer up a wonderfully original viewpoint in her third narrative feature Woman Unknown. In stripping down her drama she manages to avoid the sensationalism of war and imbue it with a cold realism echoing the unspoken aftermath of Nazi atrocities.
Set in 1945 Denmark, immediately after the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation we observe a former housemaid turned fiancé of the household patriarch Marie (Mathilde Arcel). She’s preparing for a very important dinner party to celebrate her engagement to Christian (Carsten Bjørnlund) , a wealthy factory owner who skulks about the house like an emotionless soldier. Everything seems to be going to plan until she bumps into Karl (Thorbjørn Hedegaard) , a man from her past who threatens to dredge potentially life threatening secrets and put them out into the world.
There is a purposeful, measured pace to the film that greatly serves the idea of the looming, invisible presence of the war’s recent conclusion. el-Toukey makes the decision to let the camera linger on Marie for almost the entire film and Mathilde Arcel puts in a fantastic performance. One wrong move in this reality and Marie could suffer unfathomable consequences and her life feels like it’s balanced on the surface of a very sharp blade. There is a constant danger for Danish women around the fact that some might have fraternised with German soldiers during the occupation. This is a treasonous act but also speaks to the blatant misogyny rampant in this era as forceful, military personnel can enact any type of questioning, pressure or violence towards women they see fit. In a world broken down by horrors there’s a lawlessness that makes Marie’s every decision feel like life and death.
There is a lack of movement in the cinematography from Jasper Spanning as if a phantom floats by Marie as detached from the world as she feels. The tone is similar to Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, where justice is technically possible but might as well be buried at the centre of the earth’s molten core. Her fiancé’s work more than hints at a whiff of immoral sales of goods to the type of people you’d never want to do business with or look in the eye. This blatant disregard for the consequences of one’s actions, as long as it benefits you is a horrible echo of the modern world and the perpetuating and normalisation of genocide. Whenever Marie tries to take even the tiniest bit of control of her life she’s met with resistance or straight up aggression. She’s so out of control she might as well be a coatrack in the corner of the house. But a coatrack is better than a corpse and the film speaks to the kind of complicity forced and acts enacted mostly by men upon women to survive, much like The Zone of Interest, out of sight out of mind, if you’re safe that’s all that matters.
4 / 5
Woman Unknown is an engaging and fresh take on the repression of post war female voices and how these glaring injustices have evolved in ways that we still recognise today.
