The sexual frontier’s early days

Film review: The Danish Girl

MANILA, Philippines – Showing exclusively at the Ayala Cinemas, The Danish Girl is a stylized examination of the early days of challenging sexual and gender conventions, and the inherent tragedy that those days evoked. Gorgeously shot and set in mid-1920s Denmark, the film dissects the life of Lili Elbe, one of the first recipients of a sex reassignment surgery.

Directed by Tom Hooper who gave us The King’s Speech and Les Miserablés, the film is a dignified meditation on the mental trauma and anguish that characterized that era, and how particular individuals coped with their dire predicament, given the societal rules governing at the time.

Eddie Redmayne tackles the role of Einar/Lili, a noted landscape painter of the time. Alicia Vikander portrays Einar’s wife, Gerda, herself a portrait artist.

The film draws its strength essentially from the journey that it depicts, and the rock solid portrayals we get from the main cast. Redmayne turns in a breath-taking performance, using each minute gesture and facial tic to signify the “secret” Einar has been harboring his whole life. The small, incremental stages of his unraveling are painstakingly documented in the film, and allow us to take the sad journey with Einar/Lili.

Vikander gets my nod as one of the more interesting new, young actresses — from Ex-Machina, where she played an AI, to The Danish Girl means great, measured and nuanced performances, where restraint and texture, rather than histrionics and in-your-face acting, are required. Matthias Schoenaerts, Amber Heard and Ben Whishaw (slumming it from the Bond films where he plays the young Q) all contribute to the more than able support cast.

Costume design and cinematography are other strong aspects of the film.
What the critics complained about was the preponderance of historical inaccuracies in the film. One major aspect would be how the film played with the facts to turn it into a transcendent love story. In actual fact, by the time Lili’s life was heading down its tragic route, Gerda had deserted Lili and remarried, despite also having gained a reputation for being lesbian. Lili was herself living with an art dealer, with whom she/he wished to marry and bear his child — said dealer is completely absent in the film. Banned in several countries on the grounds of moral depravity, this sad fact shows how, up to this day, in many parts of the world, an honest and open discussion of sexuality is still a pipe dream.

So with a truly impressive sense of time and place, and with portrayals that impress, there is much to recommend with The Danish Girl in spite of the fictitious touches.