The Danish Girl

classified 15
Film

Please note: This was screened in Jan 2016

Director
Tom Hooper
Cast
Alicia Vikander, Eddie Redmayne, Tusse Silberg
Details
120 mins, 2015, UK/Germany/USA

Eddie Redmayne gives a transformative performance, in a role that is sure to land him a second consecutive Oscar® nomination, in this true story of a Danish artist who was one of the first recipients of gender reassignment surgery in this beautiful, moving biopic from The King's Speech director Tom Hooper.

In 1920s Copenhagen, Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is an in demand landscape painter who is happily married to Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander), a less successful portrait artist. While working on her latest painting, Gerda asks her husband to stand in for a female model, wearing feminine clothes - and the experience doesn't awaken new feelings in Einar, exactly, so much as stir some that were already there.

At first the sexually adventurous Gerda finds it a bit of a turn on, and is amused at her husband's rediscovery, but when Einar attends an upcoming party as Lili (where an admirer, played by Ben Whishaw, notes "You're different from most girls") it becomes unclear which identity is the performance and which is the reality. The couple's situation entered into completely unchartered territory as Einar finds it impossible to put the genie back in the bottle: she will become Lili, one of the first known recipients of gender reassignment surgery.

It's a sensitive and remarkable story - of a personal struggle and of a marriage - that isn't painted by numbers. The Danish Girl will be in the frame long after Oscar® season rolls by - mark our words.

Presented in partnership with Bristol Pride.


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