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THE DANISH GIRL
[2015, UK, USA, BELGIUM - English]

Tom Hooper directed one of my all time favourite drama films The King's Speech, which won Best Picture at both the Oscars and British Academy Film Awards in 2011. Along with it the forty-three year-old English director helmed two other successful films, sports drama The Damned United (2009) and musical epic Les Misérables (2012). Interestingly the idea to film The Danish Girl began before all that, where Hooper came upon Lucinda Coxon's adapted screenplay of a historical novel about the true story of trans woman Lili Elbe's painful transition and her heart-wrenching love story with her wife, painter Gerda Wegener. The plan was placed on the back burner due to funding difficulties, mainly because of the taboo subject. Seven Academy Awards and big box office numbers later, Hooper finally rekindled his passion project and cast Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander to bring the extraordinary love story to life. Though the selection of Redmayne was initially met with backlash (that a cisgender was playing the transgender role), the Les Miz star took the challenge and gave everyone nothing lesser than a doozy of performance.

Set in the late 1920s, the film opens with a brief glimpse into the lives of painters Einar Wegener (Redmayne) and Gerda, both nestled in their happy marriage. When the female subject of her portrait art bails on her, Gerda convinces her husband to help her complete the painting. She slips a pair of stockings on his legs, and makes him pose for her with a gown placed on him. A pivotal moment in the film, where we witness a parallel development of Gerda’s discovery of her new muse (her husband modelling for her dressed as a fictitious female model named Lili) that finally helps lift her painting career, and the unearthing of Einar’s true identity. Whilst Gerda plays along, even partly amused with her husband’s newfound kink, Einar’s life whirlwinds into a conflicting and confounding transformation.

Redmayne embodies the look and emotions of Einar-Lili like a suit and glove. As Einar continues to be enthralled in his transition, Gerda finds herself caught in an equally gripping journey. Vikander’s performance is thoroughly moving, bubbling with restrained emotions, as she pushes herself to accept, forgive and even stand by to support her husband’s plight. They both soon come to a juncture where they realize there isn’t room enough for both Einar and Lili, where Einar must make a life-threatening choice, whilst Gerda must decide where she stands in this whole entanglement.

Granted, the whole approach by director Hooper on this delicate subject and the film’s trajectory is rather conventional, but you can’t help but be hypnotized with the picture-perfect filming and setting. A visual feast, from the cinematography right up to each costume and close-up of Redmayne’s entrancing expression. I just wished there could’ve been heavier emphasis on Einar’s intricate dilemma. If Hooper would’ve taken us just a few steps closer into the agonizing development of Lili, the devastation in foreboding his bleak future given his sexual identity crisis, it would have perhaps cemented a more convincing momentum to the story. Gerda’s sacrifice and surrender end up becoming the bigger focus and throughline that really moved the audience, instead of feeling how torn apart Einar-Lili’s emotions are. It would’ve been perfect if we were left equally shattered by both their stories.

Rating: A-

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THE DANISH GIRL'S JOURNEY

It’s hard to imagine that this film was once considered a “commercial poison” and producer Gail Mutrux had to patiently seek a glint of hope for the right people and attraction to bring it to the silver screens. Taking a decade to be finally produced from the time screenwriter Lucinda Coxon started working on it, The Danish Girl had been circulating among numerous filmmakers and actors, and had a fair share of drop-outs including Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rachel Weisz. All three were initially slated to play the role of Gerda Wegener, the wife of Lili Elbe who supported him in his journey to be one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery. In fact, finding the right actor to play Elbe proved to be even much harder. Nicole Kidman at some point in 2008 signed on to produce and play Elbe, that too didn’t pan out. Then finally in that same year during the filming of a battle sequence in Les Misérables, director Tom Hooper handed a large unmarked envelope to Eddie Redmayne and calmly said, “Read it.”

"I knew the script had a long, tortured history," Redmayne shares on his experience, “But it's a wonderful love story. It reframed my notion of love, that love is not about gender or bodies. It's about souls. The minute I read it, I wanted to do it – I wanted to make it right away, right after Les Mis." But Hooper told him to calm down as it would take time, and it took three years before he actually signed on officially to The Danish Girl. "It was a very vulnerable feeling," the Oscar-winning actor shares on his extreme transformative role. "You're being judged wherever you go by crew and castmembers. You're scrutinized. People think actors are always wanting to take their clothes off for the camera, like, 'I'm ready to get naked!’ But it's not true. It was as uncomfortable an experience for me as it would be for anybody." In one particular scene, Redmayne stands naked in front of a full-length mirror, his genitalia tucked between his thighs.

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