Tom Hooper and Eddie Redmayne’s The Danish Girl makes for a thoughtful and important portrait of gender identity.
It refers to feeling like a woman in a womans body or a man in a mans boy.
Its not about who you are attracted to; its about who you are.
Hooper ofThe Kings SpeechandLes Miserableshas thereby set himself an ambitious task in adapting it to a film.
The movie takes us to Copenhagen in 1926.
Artist Einar Wegener is married to Gerda Wegener and is revered for landscape paintings.
Gerda is also an artist, less renowned but steadily working as a portraitist of prominent citizens.
Gerda unexpectedly finds that she has a new muse, and renewed creative ferment.
But the couple soon brush up against societys disapproval.
Through the other, each of them finds the courage to be who they are at heart.
Lili and Gerdas marriage, and work evolve as they navigate Lilis groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.
The Danish Girlgets all the ingredients right to make a popular movie out of an unpopular topic.
Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) plays with suave delicacy Wegeners odyssey.
There is no mimicry of effeminate stereotypes in his performance.
His interpretation confronts hyper-feminization with naturalism while Lili traverses the transition.
Every trans story is unique and individual; there is no one trans experience.
Wegeners transition occurred in the late 1920s.
This review was originally published on Sept. 7, 2015, following the Venice Film Festival premiere.
Rating:
5 out of 5
