Sexuality and the City

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2016)

In his 2000 book, David Ebershoff never set out to write the definitive biography of Lili Elbe (born Einar Wegener) and likewise this film doesn't parade a "True Story" claim at the start. What we get is a fictionalised account of one of the first individuals to receive gender reassignment surgery, in 1930.
The story focuses on Einar's transition and its effects on his marriage to the portrait painter Gerda Gottlieb (Alicia Vikander). The woman Einar wants to be, named Lili, is the third person in the relationship, causing complex jealousy and resentment. Surgery seems like the only option to remove the ambiguity and confusion in their relationship – although Lili also risks losing her life.
It might have awards-bait written all over it but it's not the "issue" movie the trailer would have us believe. Or, at least the issue isn't political or sociological, it's psychological and philosophical. In its strongest moments The Danish Girl –explores identity in unusual depth and with unusual conviction. Fiction, here, liberates a greater truth.
Redmayne's performance occasionally strays into the realm of mannered and affected but it also shows us a complex vulnerability which confidently elicits as much frustration as sympathy. It's another physical transformation, arguably more challenging than his Stephen Hawking. Redmayne is portraying a person who's man in body and woman in spirit. In The Theory of Everything the actor's challenge was to portray disability; here, the challenge is on the audience, to empathise with someone who believes their perfectly able body is wrong.
For me, Vikander is the real star here. She's strong yet heartbreaking in the impossible role of Einar's wife. What will she ultimately become when Einar is replaced by Lili? I'm not sure she even knows. As with Ex Machina, Vikander has a rare poise: an ability to command the screen with silence and stillness. It's the opposite of Redmayne's restless turn.
The script mostly lands. Some lines sound like they were written to be quoted rather than to be spoken – "You made me possible" – but these spare words do get to the heart of things. And what heart this film has. Its triumph isn't only in putting a transgender person front-and-centre without pathologising their condition; it is in allowing us to see sensitivity and gentleness in men without assuming homosexuality.
Alexandre Desplat's score is a bit soppy, its rolling river piano mimicking Michael Nyman in the blandest way, but it can't spoil the craft within the frame. Director Tom Hooper throws in some familiar elements: that hyper-real theatre set aesthetic we've seen in John Adams and Les Miserables, and those extreme close-ups which would be warts-and-all were we not looking at exquisite movie stars.
As Lili moves closer to her actualisation, her world is bedecked in the light and colour of Paris, before moving into nature, into truth. In the end we get an outrageous Movie Moment but against the odds it works, and you're weeping. And you reflect and realise that you've just seen a quiet landmark of a movie.