Drags at the beginning and end, strong in the middle

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2016)

THE DANISH GIRL is a beautifully made, artistically directed motion picture with 2 very strong lead performers telling an important story of a pioneer in the Transgender community. Unfortunately, it only had about 1 hour and 20 minutes worth of material to cover in it's 1 hour and 57 minute length.
To make up for it's lack of story, director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) relies on very pretty, almost portrait-like pictures in depicting the story of married artists Einer Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) and Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) as they deal with the growing realization that Einer is living a lie as a man and really needs to be living the life of his female alter-ego, Lili. Therefore, the first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes of this film really drag - but, boy, is that middle hour really, really good.
Starting with the acting Redmayne is perfectly cast as Einer/Lili. His portrayal starts as a male with a female inside that you watch metamorph into the full-blown female that she is. Redmayne is delicate and strong, sure and unsure, male and female throughout the film but never loses the inner beauty and inner strength of his character. He is nominated for a BEST ACTOR Oscar (an award he won last year for playing Stephen Hawking in THEORY OF EVERYTHING) and has followed that up with another strong, nuanced performance.
But, to me, this movie belonged to Alicia Vikander as his wife, Gerda. At first, encouraging Einer to dress in women's clothes, as her muse, Gerda realizes that she is losing her husband to another woman - but that woman IS her husband and the anger, frustration, confusion and LOVE she has for this person is vividly seen. She is nominated for Best SUPPORTING Actress for her role - an Award that I think she will win - but that is misleading, for it is the LEAD part in this fim.
As mentioned above, Director Hooper delivers some VERY pretty pictures. Since he is dealing with two artists, quite a few of his compositions on the screen could be mistaken for painted pictures, absolutely a choice that was made that works quite well. But, because he does not have quite a full movie's worth of material to work with, he does have a tendency to let his camera linger or slow pan as our two leads gaze out a window to contemplate the events of these lives.
7 (out of 10) stars and you can take that to the Bank (of Marquis)