THE DANISH GIRL
The Danish Girl
Einar Wegener, the character played by Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, may be briefly uncertain about his sexuality, but the film never leaves much room for doubt. Married to fellow painter Gerda Wegener ( Alicia Vikander) in 1920s Copenhagen, Einar is, to put it bluntly, clearly the submissive one in the relationship.
We see the outspoken Gerda early on, painting a man’s portrait and assuring her plainly uncomfortable subject that “there is some pleasure in it once you ... submit.” Later, talking about her early meetings with her future husband, she notes: “When I said hello to him he actually blushed.” And, even more tellingly: “It was like kissing myself.”
But we’re not here to guess what’s going to happen. As the title, the poster and all the award-season buzz has told us, this is the story of when Einar met Lili, and became her.
There was an actual Einar/Lili in early-20th-century Denmark, although the source material for this story is the highly fictionalized account told by David Ebershoff in his 2000 novel, also called The Danish Girl. Eddie Redmayne, with his slight physique, soft features and a startling lack of chest hair, is perfectly cast in the role.
In fact, the performance often threatens to overshadow the film, with its soft-focus lighting and occasional fisheye lens courtesy of cinematographer Danny Cohen trying a bit too hard to replicate the look and feel of a painting. But director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), working from an adaptation by Lucinda Coxon, knows when to get out of his star’s way.
Many of the film’s best moments are when Einar, trying on his wife’s clothes as well as wardrobe from their studio, evinces a simple, radiant joy at what he is becoming. If you’ll forgive the awkward grammar, it’s as though he’s in the process of discovering her- self. Lili starts off awkward, hesitant, speaking in a husky whisper, but by the end of the movie she’s found her voice and seems at home in her body.
The medical world is less kind. Lili became one of the first transgender women to undergo sex reassignment surgery, but before she finds the sympathetic surgeon Fonnesbech — “The doctor is curing me of the sickness that was my disguise” — she is diagnosed with all manner of ills. Homosexuality, says one doctor. Schizophrenia, declares another. Radiation therapy is prescribed, as is trepanation, but Lili neither wants nor needs holes in her head.
And although we tend to think of recent recognition of non-binary sexuality as a gradual (though not nearly steep enough) climb, there have always been pockets of tolerance, even acceptance.
One such reserve is found in Matthias Schoenaerts as Einar’s childhood friend Hans, who tells Lili: “I’ve only really liked a handful of people in my life, and you’ve been two of them.” Vikander’s character is an- other, even though painfully aware that what started out for her as something of a game is now pulling her marriage apart.
Lili’s transformation may be covered in brisk cinematic strokes, but Redmayne helps fill in the palette with his gradual progression, shading and sliding with seeming effort- lessness between the masculine and the feminine. ΩΩΩ
The Danish Girl opens Dec. 11 in Toronto, and Dec. 18 in Montreal and Vancouver, with more cities on Dec. 25.