The Danish Girl

Dir: Tom Hooper

2015

***

The Danish Girl is easily Tom Hooper's best film, however, in my opinion he's a director that has become rather lazy after his initial success. The Danish Girl is awards fodder before it is an accomplished story. The script is terribly overcooked, the first twenty minutes is a bombardment of suggestive and over-obvious leads into the film's theme. The spoon-feeding continues throughout, I'm not sure who this really services, as most viewers will know what the film is about and those that don't probably won't appreciate how predictable it is. The story really does skip around what is quite an important issue and never once tackles the taboo. Visually, the film is absolutely stunning, with every location meticulously chosen to reflect the trends of the day and to complement the artistic work of the main characters but there is no denying, this is the safe version of what was a very different story. The visual interpretation of Lili Elbe's realisation that he was really born a women is actually rather tasteless in that it is skipped through in such a shallow way. There is a lot of looking into mirrors, stroking soft materials and the putting of ones hand upon ones face, and really not much else. I like Eddie Redmayne but the truth is that his is not really an award-worthy performance. He lost a lot of weight and was dressed well. That really is all his portrayal is. Far greater praise should be given to Alicia Vikander for her performance, although her character is also woefully under-developed. She's a brilliant actor, I do hope she isn't overlooked as she deserves meaty roles and shouldn't just be considered as possibly the next Bond girl (my first prediction of the year). So many aspects of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener's work, life and relationship are missing here, it's impossible to fit all of someone's life in a film but with a running time of just over two hours, they left a lot out and filled the story with an awful amount of unnecessary filler and fictional characters who bring nothing to the story. There are one or two sumptuous scenes in the film that it will ultimately be remembered for but the real life story of the couple is far more interesting and deserved far more depth. It's a squandered story, one that has been taken advantage of and given a predictable and sickly-sweet ending. I fear it has achieved very little for the 'transgender movement' as the final credits refers to it by. Personally I think that tells you all you need to know, the film makers think those with transgender issues are a 'movement' rather than people. The Danish Girl is a beautiful dream sequence, an aspartame version of the truth, an inoffensive version of a very real and difficult issue that shouldn't affect the votes from the bigoted mass. Plenty to enjoy visually, enough to warrant three stars but in many respects it really doesn't deserve them. I want to see the Mike Leigh version instead.