‘Woman Unknown’ Review: May el-Toukhy’s Unsubtle Study of Sexual Shame

Against the rubble gray and stiff mahogany with which director May el-Toukhy washes out her post-Second World War Copenhagen, the pops of crimson in “Woman Unknown” announce a stark symbolism that’s about as subtle as the red swastika eventually smeared on the front door of protagonist Marie (Mathilde Arcel). As obvious as these subliminal scarlet letters may be, they’re not without a certain Hitchcockian power in a film about sexual shame and a kind of violence against women’s bodies that operates from the inside out. But as this is el-Toukhy — whose steely 2019 incest drama “Queen of Hearts” was promptly adapted by French provocatrice Catherine Breillat in “Last Summer” — the film’s feminism, or lack thereof depending on how you take your empowerment, is a prickly matter by design.

As with the women played by Emmanuelle Riva in “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” or Charlotte Rampling in “The Night Porter,” a crisis is sparked over Marie’s supposedly soiled sheets, with el-Toukhy basing her story on the many accounts of public punishment received by women from Nazi-occupied countries who had sexual relations with German soldiers during the war. It’s a spicy conceit from the only woman director in Venice’s main competition, and its implications arguably creep out beyond the historical context in question — should our private lives be judged and exposed to real consequences? Not that el-Toukhy has made a particularly open film with this neatly scripted psychodrama, her austere visuals and prim haut-bourgeois setting practically asking to be unraveled. 

Marie, a maid and nanny to the twiggy blonde child of her employer Christian (Carsten Bjornlund), a widower and owner of a glove-making factory, carries herself as if permanently bound in a corset: breath held, mouth tight, her eyes shifty as if dreading the next reprimand. It makes sense given her workplace’s exacting standards, in which place settings are arranged according to centimeter-precise measurements and stony head maid Esther (Marina Bouras) is always watching.

But early on, when Christian discreetly caresses Marie’s cheek, it’s clear that it’s not just her job that’s at stake should she fall, but her newly gained status as lady of the house. A long shot of a pearly silk dress — a wedding dress — dangling like a carrot in an empty closet doubles as a harbinger of doom when she’s spotted by Karl (Thorbjorn Hedegaard), an old classmate from her hometown who’s much too eager to catch up. It’s through this jittery encounter, and a visit to the doctor where Marie re-ups on the liquid opium she takes to dull the pain of sex with Christian, that we learn she once had a baby boy, and that child caused her to flee her past life. 

El-Toukhy and Maren Louise Kaehne’s script doesn’t connect the dots for you with explanatory dialogue, but those dots are still awfully close. Scenes of nameless women being knocked around on the streets by gangs of men, who chop off their hair and tear off their clothes before branding them with painted swastikas, make it brutally clear what Marie is hiding from. And what starts out with the echoing, empty rooms of paranoia turns into whispers from the domestic staff after Karl discovers where Marie lives. The building door is marked with Nazi insignia shortly after, leaving Marie desperate to cover the tracks that lead to her. 

Cinematographer Jasper Spanning’s static, shadowy frames give way to shallow-lensed close-ups as Marie plunges into a panicked spiral that, at one point, sees her consenting to a wad of spit in her mouth. That scene, which begins with a pan over Marie’s naked body as Karl swats her hands away to do as he pleases, rhymes with comparably frigid moments involving the gilded milieu she aspires to join — as when a snooty tailor takes her measurements or when Christian uses her as a hand model to show off a new glove design. This body does not belong to her, and her refusal to cede control of it to her male masters will end in their wrath, a point made repeatedly, albeit with a harrowing range of registers. 

Marie’s humanity and capacity for tenderness come through in her scenes with children, though these aren’t nearly weighty enough — despite Arcel’s commendably nervy performance —  to carry out her concluding crash-out convincingly. Her relationship with the next-door neighbor, a single mother far too liberated to escape scrutiny in midcentury Denmark, gets a few threadbare scenes to prime this spiritual flurry, where red appears one last time in the form of blood on Marie’s hands. Worse than the loogie is the feminine betrayal that weighs on her soul, or at least that’s how it’s supposed to read.