Without any doubt, the fact that The Danish Girl exists at all is something worth celebrating. That one of the major dramatic films of the year is a historical piece about one of the earliest trans pioneers of the 20th century starring two of the hottest stars of the year is a big deal. But to end our discussion of the film’s merits there, as it seems director Tom Hooper might like us to do, is, for lack of a better phrase, letting it off the hook too easily. Tom Hooper, director of lush period pieces such as The King’s Speech and Les Miserables, is once again in top visual form with his stunning, painting-like frames. Breathtaking shots of the Danish countryside, the insides of a ballet studio, artists’s apartment, woman’s closet, are all small masterpieces in and of themselves. But these are only the trappings of good cinema, these are the designs and dressings of a well-curated frame that Hooper seems to repeatedly favor at the expense of character and depth of story. In the case of The Danish Girl, whose narrative relies on our understanding the difference between the appearance of things versus the genuine lived reality of them, one must question whether he was the right director for the task.
The story tells of Danish artist Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne), making her transition in late 1920s Europe from her former male identity, Einar Wegener. Alongside Lili is Gerda (Alicia Vikander), the wife who herself must partake in a kind of transition as her marriage and own sexual identity come under consideration. Gerda, seen as a less talented artist than her husband (one of several departures from the actual history of the couple), invites Einar to step in for a model that had to cancel. Einar obliges, and gingerly applies the silk and slippers that represent a very particular kind of delicate femininity, thus beginning her transition, which ends tragically as a result of early attempts at gender-reassignment surgery. In depicting a journey that maps a deep and complex psychological landscape, Hooper frames the transition entirely around objects, fabric, and glances of furtive curiosity of which Mr. Redmayne is a master, creating an impression that Lili’s identity is first born from a somewhat fetishistic obsession with performative femininity. This in and of itself is not the issue, it’s that it is presented as the sum total of transgenderism throughout the film.
Lili is only ever seen engaging with femininity via superficial means – an understandable visual motif and indicative of the time period, but the film’s unwillingness to ever address this and probe further into the character’s emotional life beyond this leads it to equate the internal experience of womanhood with what Mary Ann Doane famously refers to as the Female Masquerade. There is no discernible period of the film in which a distinction is made between Lili’s love for wearing dresses and the genuine feeling that she is, fundamentally (in whatever sense one can be), a woman. Instead, this utterly crucial piece of understanding, one that arguably defines transgenderism in comparison to say, transvestism or even gender fluidity and should mark the turning point in the journey, is relegated to trite, sentimental dialogue such as, “I dream Lili’s dreams…” It is important to interrogate the notions of what it means to be a woman when discussing trans issues, as Caitlyn Jenner is now repeatedly being challenged to do, but The Danish Girl resolves to a definition of dresses, lipstick, and coquettishness. And while that may certainly be reflective of the gender politics of the 1920s, it is not of 2015, the year in which the film is being made.
The Danish Girl knows its audience. It is clearly a film designed for Academy voters, who by and large are cisgendered heterosexual men over the age of 50, whose exposure to trans experiences may be limited at best. It makes the issue palatable to those who still accidentally or purposefully refer to Caitlyn Jenner as Bruce. If they come away from this film with a better understanding of transgenderism, then that is a good thing. However, that is also much of the audience at whom Transparent is aimed, and they have welcomed and awarded it with open arms. We are now at a point where the excuse of minimizing or negotiating more challenging portraits of LGBT life in favor of appealing to cis, heterosexual audiences can and should be seen for the laziness it is. We need to move past shallow queer and trans narratives that use the excuse of their audience to justify hollow, 2-dimensional characterization.
I would have loved The Danish Girl had it told me the true story of Gerda and Lili. Gerda, a known bisexual whose primary claim to fame as an artist was her illustrated lesbian erotica, as the supportive wife of Lili, a pioneer of the trans movement, whose legal recognition as a woman was the primary reason for the couple’s separation (because two women could not be married). I refuse to believe that the awards-movie audiences of 2015, a year in which Carol and Tangerine are on the majority of top 10 lists, would not have been interested in that story (which I acknowledge may be naive, but isn’t the point to challenge?), but I suppose that’s a conversation larger than this review can contain. In a film whose subject matter centers entirely on the question of authenticity, The Danish Girl is woefully artificial.
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