The Danish Girl is a movie that is difficult to judge for a few reasons. Directed by Tom Hooper, who previously directed The King's Speech and Les Miserables, The Danish Girl feels very refined and tasteful. I'm not so sure that this is a good thing.
Other reviews have suggested that The Danish Girl's main problem is that it's too "safe". It's the story of Lili Elbe, the first person to undergo gender-confirmation surgery. Born Einar Wegener, Elbe was a landscape painter. Her wife, Gerda, was also a painter (and painted some VERY NSFW art, btw). In the film, Gerda asks Einar to sit for her while wearing a pair of stockings and heeled shoes, since the model for the painting she's working on cancelled. As Einar sits and looks down at his own stockinged legs, something comes alive in him (note: I'll use "him" along with "Einar" and "her" along with "Lili" to avoid confusion).
Einar begins to sit as Gerda's model on a regular basis and to wear women's clothing and makeup in public. While Gerda thinks of this a game--maybe even with a sexual component--Einar understands that it's something much deeper and life-altering: Einar is dying and Lili is taking his place. While this is difficult for Gerda to understand and accept, she eventually supports Lili, who is now living fully as a woman, in her quest to have surgery so that her outsides match her insides.
I don't really know if I agree that The Danish Girl is "safe"...and I don't really know that I care if it is. In 1993 Tom Hanks--America's male sweetheart--played a gay man with AIDS in Philadelphia. It's a classic example of a difficult, and, to many, terrifying issue being made "safe" for mainstream audiences. But Philadelphia was one of many works of art, safe and unsafe, that made mainstream people care about AIDS. Yeah, it would be great if everyone was born caring about everyone else, but in reality most people have to actively learn how to be empathic to people who are different from them, and film and entertainment help a lot with that.
Ok, I digress. "Safe" or not, there's definitely something lacking in The Danish Girl--especially the second half, which gets very melodramatic. The first half is exciting and fun--and a little edgy. We're seeing Einar's awakening through both his and his wife's eyes. There are so many mixed feelings. When Gerda undresses Einar only to discover that he has her slip on underneath his clothes, it's a dangerous (will she be mad?) and sexy (oh, she's definitely not mad) moment, filled with possibility. When Einar appears at a party as Lili and is propositioned by Henrick, a friend of the Wegener's, Eddie Redmayne's (more on his performance below) face is a canvas of emotions: confusion, fear, disgust, curiosity, and desire all at once. The film hints at but never really fully explores the intersections between sexuality and gender. In the early stages of Einar's "coming out" (for lack of a better term), it's possible to read his interest in women's clothing as a sexual thing, or an adult form of make-believe. Einar is trying to figure out who exactly he is and what he wants right along with the audience.
It's a testament to Eddie Redmayne's acting skills that we are able to see and understand the full range of emotions during Einar's transition into Lili. When Gerda suggests he dress as Lili and attend a party, he is breathless with excitement, but also freaked out. It's like a teenager losing their virginity--the absolute desire for it to happen coupled with nausea-inducing fear of the unknown. But once Einar starts living as Lili full time, she can't "go back" to being Einar for Gerda's sake, even as Gerda pleads for her to "Go get Einar. I need my husband." It's an incredibly emotional scene that cements Lili's true nature: she is a woman and can't just go back to being a man.
The filmmakers got flack for casting a cis-gender man as a trans character and I agree that it was a missed opportunity to have a trans actor play a trans role. But I really enjoyed Redmayne's performance and thought he did an excellent job, especially in portraying Lili's efforts to learn feminine posture and mannerisms. I think my favorite scene in the movie is when Einar visits a peep show to watch and model the mannerisms of the nude woman behind the curtain. I dunno. The scene was a little "Film School 101", but it just was a beautiful melding of Einar's erotic and emotional journey.
But, as I mentioned above, the film kind of goes limp in the second half. It becomes cringe-inducingly earnest and loses all of its honesty in the process. It becomes Lifetime movie material, with lots of sobbing, running away dramatically, bedside reunions, and the like. It tries very hard to get the audience to FEEL ALL THE FEELS that it ends up feeling only one thing: forced.
Ultimately, The Danish Girl is a tease. It's a good enough film, with excellent performances (I didn't even get around to mentioning Alicia Vikander's AWESOME, natural, earthy performance as Gerda Wegener), but not a great film. It does its part to educate audiences in trans history and why trans rights are important, but it kinda hedges its bets there too. It's one of those movies where you leave thinking, "That was good. But it could have been so much better."
Grade: C+
Eddie Redmayne is prettier than you...and prettier than your boyfriend.
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