Business as usual from the predictable Hooper

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2016)

You know what to expect from a Tom Hooper film or rather you know what not to expect and that is something edgy. Hooper is the man who gave us "The King's Speech" and then "Les Miserables". "The King's Speech" won the Oscar as the year's Best Picture and Hooper himself, somewhat surprisingly, picked up the Oscar for Best Director. It was a perfectly fine example of what in America might have been called 'Masterpiece Theatre' and "The Danish Girl" is no different, apart from being duller and even more conventional when the material positively cries out for 'edgy'.
It's the story of Einer Wegener, a painter in the Copenhagen of 1926, who was also Lili Elbe. Lili was one of the first recorded examples of transgender, or for the uninitiated, a man 'trapped' in a woman's body but this ham-fistedly well-intentioned film approaches the subject with such an initial tentativeness that it's hard to quite know who Einer/Lili actually is. At first he seems simply to be just another man who likes to dress up in his wife's clothes and who gets a sexual kick out of it. Then he comes across as just another gay man in a frock and the movie is at least half way through before we realize Lili is actually transgender.
It's all done in the best possible taste though God knows who Hooper imagined his audience might be. It's hardly a tribute to either Lili or to the transgender community today, while gay men could just find it a tad offensive. Hooper's usual target audience of Aunt Ednas might gasp and sigh but are otherwise unlikely to embrace the picture. On the plus side, Eddie Redmayne does get under both Einer and Lili's skin and inside their heads with a real technical flourish that's certainly impressive. It's an Oscar bait performance, showy and ostentatious, but at least it's well-crafted while Alicia Vikander is excellent as the poor, put-upon wife, despite the part being shamefully underwritten. Midway through I started to notice the costumes, not just the eye-catching frocks but the suits as well. When that happens you know the film is in trouble.