"Whilst The Danish Girl certainly looks like a designer has had a considerable amount of fun with a mood board it never detracts from the core story"

I’ve been truly bemused by the range of opinions I’ve heard about The Danish Girl. I watched a stupefied Claudia Winkleman openly wonder if other reviewers had even seen the same film as her. They called it ‘too pretty’ and said the heart of Lili Elbe’s gutsy autobiography, ‘Man Into Woman’ on which it is loosely based had been ripped out. Whilst The Danish Girl certainly looks like a designer has had a considerable amount of fun with a mood board it never detracts from the core story.

Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) is a Danish painter of some repute, living in Copenhagen in 1926. He’s married to Gerda (Alicia Vikander) who’s also a painter. They are very much in love and seemingly content. Einar is focused and delicate whilst Gerda is bohemian and assertive. Einar repeatedly paints repressed scenes from his childhood which sell well and Gerda repeatedly paints anything in the hope of finding something that will sell well.

When Gerda’s female model doesn’t show for a sitting she asks Einar to sit for her. Draped in finery and femininity Einar becomes enchanted. It unlocks something deep inside him which he can no longer deny. Rather than being repulsed by the change in Einar, Gerda is personally and artistically inspired. The new life that emerges from Einar is christened Lili and she becomes Gerda’s muse and Gerda becomes her mentor.

As Lili grows it becomes harder for Einar to confine her despite the evident pain it creates. Gerda cries that she thought it was just a game and Lili replies that something has changed. They seek medical advice, but Lili is an anomaly that is approximately 50 years ahead of medical understanding. Einar’s told he’s gay, schizophrenic or suffering from a chemical imbalance and Gerda is torn between the loss of her beloved husband and the critical acclaim she’s receiving for her paintings of Lili. As the pain increases Lili considers the thought of killing Einar and this echoes real life events as Einar states in ‘Man Into Woman’ that May 1, 1930 would be the day he would end his life. Lili eventually elects for gender reassignment surgery, which brings her some peace, but ultimately costs her her life.

Whether this film is too sanitised or stylised is largely irrelevant. As I was leaving the screening I walked behind 2 journalists, one of whom was saying ‘this is a great film, but it’s so niche. I don’t know who will go and see it’. That’s exactly why films like this need to be made. The Danish Girl is a story about a person’s brave quest to be themselves against considerable odds and a story of tenacious love. Marriages breakdown when people change jobs, let alone gender. No one is going to leave the cinema after watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens and say ‘that’s a great film, but I do wonder how people can relate to aliens, droids and wars in an imaginary galaxy far, far away’. As Lili states in ‘Man Into Woman,’ ‘I, Lili, am vital and have a right to life.’ Until we can see the universal themes in a story such as this rather than get bogged down in detracting discussions about their prettification or the niche nature of the subject matter films like this will still need to be made.