Capping off the year that transgender stopped being transgressive, the story of artist Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) makes for one of the year’s finest films.
Told with extraordinary warmth by director Tom Hooper (“Les Misérables,” “The King’s Speech”), “The Danish Girl” is Redmayne’s best performance yet, surpassing even his Oscar-winning turn as Stephen Hawking last year. Alicia Vikander (“Testament of Youth”) is equally affecting in a less showy role as Gerda, the wife who inspired and ultimately facilitated her spouse’s decision to undergo surgery.
Hooper’s film is based on David Ebershoff’s book, a fictionalized account of one of the first known gender-confirmation surgeries, and begins with Redmayne’s character in masculine identity as Einar Wegener, a well-known landscape painter in 1920s Copenhagen. Though happily married to a portrait painter (Vikander), Einar comes to a crossroads when asked by Gerda to don a dancer’s legwear to fill in for a missing subject (Amber Heard). Redmayne’s face as he puts on the silky garments flits from play-acting to wonder to abject longing; we learn, gradually, that he’s always felt a feminine presence inside himself.
Initially viewing Einar’s affinity for her slips and stockings as a fun, racy joke, Gerda helps him assume a female identity — “Lili,” Heard’s dancer character dubs her — to attend a party. The scene is a turning point: Hooper and Redmayne succeed in showing you Einar is Lili; she’s not a costume or put-on character.
Lucinda Coxon’s screenplay gives a historically fascinating and deeply sad portrayal of Lili’s ensuing fight to become, as she says, “entirely myself.” While diagnosed as disturbed and dangerous, beaten by thugs and, eventually, suicidal, she also finds salvation in becoming Gerda’s best-selling muse, in the courtship of a gay man (Ben Whishaw) and in clandestinely studying the movements of other women. In masculine dress, she ducks into a Paris peep show to sit in the dark, tentatively mimicking the stripper’s movements. The increasingly alienated Gerda, meanwhile, seeks support from Einar’s childhood friend (Matthias Schoenaerts), who seems unsurprised by Lili’s emergence.
When a doctor (Sebastian Koch) finally tells Lili he supports her belief that she’s trapped in the wrong body — and that he’s willing to attempt to correct her gender via surgery — the astonishment, fear and relief on her face is heartbreaking.
If there’s any shortcoming in “The Danish Girl,” it’s the screenplay’s rendering of Gerda, who in real life was more artistically daring and less traumatized by her spouse’s transition. I hope she’ll merit her own film, down the road. As it is, though, this film’s inevitable Oscar buzz seems likely to attract a big, mainstream audience and leave them with more empathy for the transgendered — which seems the best possible tribute to Lili Elbe.