Review: 'Danish Girl' has dynamic duo
There’s no resting on Oscar laurels for Eddie Redmayne, who has thrown himself into yet another emotional and transformative role in The Danish Girl.
Delicately directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), the period drama (*** out of four; rated R; opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide through December) features the Theory of Everything star as transgender icon Lili Elbe, the first person known to receive gender reassignment surgery. It's a performance that’s actually more impressive than the one Redmayne won his Oscar for — playing Stephen Hawking — but he’s not the only standout in this moving love story, as Alicia Vikander proves her thespian mettle in a breakthrough role.
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Redmayne has different sides of the same character to play — first as Einar Wegener, a talented artist in Copenhagen circa 1926 alongside his wife, fellow painter Gerda (Vikander). Her portraits aren’t having the same success as his pastoral pieces, and when their ballerina friend Ulla (Amber Heard) can’t sit for Gerda’s latest work, she enlists Einar to stand in wearing stockings and a dress.
The feminine wardrobe affects him in a startling way — which Hooper and cinematographer Danny Cohen show through close-ups of Einar’s face, as well as his hands feeling the material — and unlocks a new passion inside him. Soon, Gerda finds him wearing her nightgown underneath his masculine clothing, and Einar begins to embrace being Lili more and more. “It doesn’t matter what I wear,” he tells her. “When I dream, they’re Lili’s dreams.”
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Gerda’s story is heartbreaking but also extremely touching: Her portraits of Lili become the talk of the Paris art world as she remains devoted to her spouse, even as there’s less Einar and more Lili each passing day. As she grows closer to Einar’s childhood friend Hans (Matthias Schoenaerts), Gerda never falters in being there for Lili when doctors deem him insane or perverse, and tries to help during his groundbreaking surgery.
The supporting characters, from Ulla to Hans to Lili’s other confidante, Henrik (Ben Whishaw), aren’t nearly as strong as the movie's primary couple, mostly because of a lack of screen time or effort to dig into each person’s motivations.
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Lucinda Coxon’s script, based on David Ebershoff’s novel of the same name, is also hit-and-miss. Much of the early dialogue seems like clumsy foreshadowing — Gerda at one point tells Einar, “I’ll never be as pretty as you” — yet there is also a needed sense of humor that grounds tense scenes, buoyed by Alexandre Desplat’s splendid score.
Watching Redmayne’s character blossom into her true self is remarkable, and the awkwardness getting there only helps make it more relatable to audiences who might not be on board with the subject matter initially. By the end, it’s hard not to feel swept up in Lili’s journey because of the actor’s revealing performance.
Vikander’s tour de force is equally accomplished. She has shown glimpses of greatness this year in Ex Machina and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but the actress goes all in with Gerda, who keeps herself in check most of the time yet says it all with a single tear careening down her cheek.
The real Lili Elbe was a pioneer in the LGBT community, and The Danish Girl shows a commitment to artistically rendering the iconoclast of a less-accepting era while also respecting the tale’s social relevance today.