The Danish Girl

In many ways similar to his Oscar-winning turn as Stephen Hawking in last year’s The Theory of Everything, the actor Eddie Redmayne delivers another physically transformational performance in The Danish Girl. This time, instead of mutating from a healthy young man to an immobilized victim of early-onset ALS, Redmayne transforms from male to female, initially through surface appearances and later as one of the first patients to undergo sexual reassignment surgery (as recounted in David Ebershoff’s novel on which The Danish Girl is based). Redmayne’s lovely swan neck and a bold scene in which he stands naked in front of a mirror while tucking his penis to mimic the appearance of a female silhouette are sure to make the transgender character of Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe a plausible if not fetishistic subject. Yet we gaze at him as we might any onscreen woman, subject to standards of beauty and charm. It’s indicative of the film itself, which is more attentive to surface allures than emotional underpinnings.

No time would seem better-suited for a film like The Danish Girl than now, in this year during which transgender issues burst proudly into public consciousness. However, this film directed by Hooper (Les Misérables and Oscar-winner The King’s Speech) and written by Lucinda Coxon does little to enhance our understanding of sexual identity. It seems more devoted to its technical accomplishments than its subjective point of view. The Danish Girl opens with an extended introduction to its primary characters, the married couple Einar (Redmayne) and Gerda (Vikander) Wegener. They are both painters, living a bohemian lifestyle in 1920s Copenhagen, which includes lots of uninhibited marital sex, though Einar does take a particular liking to one of Gerda’s silky new nightgowns. When her ballerina friend Ulla (Heard) doesn’t show up for a portrait sitting, Gerda beseeches her husband to don Ulla’s stockings and ballet shoes and pose in Ulla’s place. The touch of the stockings and tutu stir something in Einar that seems new to him. In the film’s worldview, it would seem as though sexual identity is governed by little more than costume and appearance. It recalls the easiness of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” in which the future drag queen Holly Woodlawn “plucked his eyebrows on the way, shaved his legs, and then he was a she.” If only it were that simple.

Despite The Danish Girl’s lack of specificity regarding what motivates Einar’s transformation into Lili Elbe, the film is still quite lovely. Its compositions are lovely to look at, and the performances engaging. However, a sense of remoteness hangs over the project, as though we are watching characters through a pinhole diorama. Curiously, the film seems almost as much about Gerda’s experience, and one could rightly wonder who the titular “Danish girl” actually is. It’s Gerda whose idea it is to first dress her husband in women’s garb, and she supports Einar/Lili throughout the entire discovery and sexual reassignment process. Yet Gerda’s anguish, too, barely registers as she witnesses her spouse turn into a gal pal.