Movie Review: The Danish Girl

Yesterday evening, during one of my typical boring saturday nights, i’ve decided to watch the movie The Danish Girl.
It was definitively some time i had in mind to watch this movie but for a reason or another, i had always forgot. Aaaanyway, wow.
First thing you have to know about me: i adore Eddie Redmayne. I’ve been his fan and admired his works for a little more that a couple of years now, and he had never failed to surprise me. Last year, with The Theory Of Everything i thought he had achieved his best performance, but watching The Danish Girl, i seriously had some doubts. His performance on the screen is absolutely incredible and it left me speechless in more than one occasion during the whole movie. Before digging into his acting, let’s explain a little bit what the film is about

The Danish Girl is a 2015 movie directed by Tom Hopper, already director of the Oscar-winning movie The King Speech and of The Miserables. Set in the mid-1920s in Copenaghen, the movie tells the true story of Lili Elbe, the first trangernder woman who undergoes sex reassignment surgery. Lili was infact born in a male body, and had spent a large amount of her life as the landscape painter Eiden Wegener. When Eiden’s wife, Gerda, asks him to pose with some women clothing for one of her paintings, because her model couldn’t come that day, Eiden’s true self comes to life. Gerda calls his husband’s new “personality” Lili. But what started like a game, turns out to be a lot more. Eiden understands that even if Gelda helped Lili comes to life, she has always been there.
This is the starting of a long period of battles for Lili and Gerda, composed by fights, misunderstandings, lies, anger and doubts. After several visits to different doctors, many of which convinced to lock Eiden up in a psychiatric hospital, they finally come across a doctor who offers to operate Lili and give her the body of a woman. If you’re looking for a movie who only explains who trangenders people are, this is not the movie for you. The whole 1920s colture, with its fashion sense and art, plays a big role in the movie and in Lili’s discovery of her true self.

I’ve never been prouder of Eddie, for being brave enough to do a movie like this, for representing these people, for stepping into the game and exploring new things, while sending out an important message to a generation who is constantly growing and changing.
The acting of Alicia Vikander, who interpretes Gelda, is sublime and surely it gives that special sparkle, allowing us to understand and putting ourselves in the shoes of parents/relativies/spouses of trangender people.
I’m gonna leave some reviews of the movie, please read then and please, give this movie a chance. I promise it won’t let you down.

• The Telegraph: Tom Hooper’s beautiful, humane and moving biopic of the transgender artist Lili Elde, who worked during the early part of the 20th century and was one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery, may not be the most obvious next step for the director of The King’s Speech and Les Misérables. His clear-eyed, tasteful storytelling makes Lili’s struggle as easy to grasp as if she were a loveable prince played by Colin Firth. That doesn’t just make The Danish Girl watchable. It makes it revolutionary. Regarding Eddie Redmayne’s actin; it’s the kind of obviously transformative performance that is likely to be Bafta-nominated by the end of next week, and probably also Oscar-nominated the week after that. And Redmayne, who won both of those awards last year for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, would be a more than worthy contender. – But the film’s secret weapon is Vikander, But here she’s better than ever – hungry, energised, up on the balls of her feet, and an equally convincing awards prospect.

 

• Observer Colture: Regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, The Danish Girl is an overwhelming act of heroism for Eddie Redmayne. His fine features have always accented an androgyny that is part of his charm. Now he shows an intense compassion for the daunting psychology of gender transition that results in what looks like uncanny freedom on the screen. His body language in scene after scene, measure for measure, is in a class by itself. Tom Hooper, who reunites with his star after they worked together on Les Misérables, is the perfect director to find his pulse and guide him bravely to further glory in a difficult and demanding tour de force.

 

• The Indipendent: What makes Redmayne’s performance so exceptional is the way he captures both Lili’s terror and her stubborn bravery. Some of the actor’s gestures seem very mannered but we are always aware of the intelligence and feelings that are driving Lili.