Punishing those who collaborated with the Nazis in occupied countries during World War 2 seems, on first reading, like the obvious ‘right thing to do’ – a course of action that, while unpleasant, is hard to argue against. Unfortunately, it’s also one of those things where, the instant you actually read into it, it becomes something far less morally comfortable, often revolving around sexualised violence against young women forced to carry an entire collaborationist nation’s sins. It’s into this ethical morass that filmmaker May el-Toukhy drops us with Woman Unknown, a complex and confidently crafted historical drama that is, also, a dismally miserable time at the movies.
We’re in Denmark shortly after the end of World War 2 – the fortresses of the occupying Germans are still actively being dismantled – and following Marie (Mathilde Arcel). She’s a woman inhabiting a strange position as one of the maids of a rich man’s house who is soon to marry that same man (glove factory owner Christian, played by Carsten Bjornlund) and thus leap out of her position. Right now, she’s still setting the table for dinner, but in a couple of weeks she’ll be issuing orders to her current ostensible equals. Outside the house, the veterans of the Danish resistance are interrogating suspected collaborators, occasionally shooting one of the male snitches, but mostly forcibly shaving and stripping women accused of sleeping with German officers.
Unbeknownst to most, Marie is actually one of these women, a secret she’s kept artfully hidden until an old boyfriend of hers, a despicable coward of a rapist named Karl (Thorbjorn Hedegaard), reappears by chance in Marie’s life and starts making threats unless he ‘gets what he’s owed’. It’s a hugely bleak setup, played entirely without light. Of course, this is wrenching subject matter and deserves to be taken deeply seriously, but el-Toukhy and co-writer Maren Louise Kaehne are so committed to the misery that, to consistently achieve it, things like believable characters and plotting sometimes become secondary priorities.
Marie is a very tough protagonist to warm to or, to be honest, to truly care about. In the abstract, her story is tragic, but as a dramatic character, she exists just to have horrible things happen to her over and over. Arcel’s performance weathers the storm of the constant unanswered indignities, growing stronger and stronger as the film progresses, but Marie doesn’t get to make an actual decision until about a full hour into the film, and then it’s an entirely unforgiveable one. It’s a case of too much misery becoming numbing; by the time Marie is attempting to sexually assault a strange man and getting a bad head wound for her troubles it’s hard not to check out a bit.
Fortunately, Woman Unknown is at least shot absurdly well. Every frame balances the austere with the painterly and it’s completely arresting every time, frames within frames keeping Marie’s world small and options limited. If there was ever a story that needed complete formal confidence to even come close to working, it’s this one, and el-Toukhy and her DP Jasper Spanning deliver in spades here. Woman Unknown is clever and morally uncompromising and made with undeniable technical artistry. I would recommend it to almost no one.
