May el-Toukhy's elegantly appointed drama-thriller, Woman Unknown, explores sexual shame and political paranoia in postwar Denmark, consciously recalling Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. As director and co-writer, El-Toukhy crafts a shrewd and painful portrait of survival, examining the terrible acts required to endure and the effort needed to forget them.
Postwar Copenhagen household
The story unfolds in a prosperous Copenhagen apartment just after the Second World War, when the Danish resistance operated with secret-police powers to detain and interrogate suspected Nazi collaborators. Christian (Carsten Bjørnlund), an ageing factory owner and widower, has fallen for his infant daughter's nanny, Marie (Mathilde Arcel, fierce and convincing). He sees her as a new mother for the child, finds her attractive, and appreciates her submissive attitude. They become engaged.
Marie's fellow servants do not resent her rise to lady of the house. She indiscreetly sleeps with Christian in what will soon be the marital bed. Housekeeper Esther (Marina Bouras), who might have been a stern Mrs Danvers figure, proves pleasant, though she disapproves of Marie's friendship with neighbour Mrs Berg (Sofia Nolsøe), whose worldly air she dislikes.
A wedding gown and a past encounter
Marie's ability to conceal her own fears is tested when she must wear Christian's late wife's wedding gown, a pure Daphne du Maurier touch. She carries it on public transport to the dressmaker, another Hitchcockian display, leading to a disastrous encounter with someone from her past.
Throughout, Danish women accused of consorting with Germans are shamed in the streets, their heads shaved and swastikas painted on their backs. The film highlights an underacknowledged truth of postwar Denmark and France: shaming women diverted attention from men's more substantial Nazi collaboration, including Christian's, whose factory would have gone broke without Nazi customers.
Survival and cunning
As the wedding approaches, suspicion closes in on the household. Marie discovers a new strain of cunning, ruthlessness, and self-pity as she devises ruses to keep the past from overwhelming her. This very watchable, expertly managed drama about the return of the repressed screened at the Venice film festival.
