Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander star in the drama 'The Danish Girl.' Focus Features



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.




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.

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.


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.

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