Tom Hooper’s return to form after the dreadfully disappointing film
version of Les Miserables
(2012) is a fictionalised retelling of the story of a very brave and courageous
human being. Based on David Ebershoff's novel of the same name, The
Danish Girl (2015) is the story of Lille Elbe who was credited as one
of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery.
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| Lilli Elbe. |
Born Einar Magnus Andreas Wagener in Venice, Denmark in 1882 as a male,
met his future wife at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and married in
1904. Einar specialised in landscape painting while he wife Gerda illustrated
books and fashion magazines. Einar love of dressing as a woman started when he
was asked to wear stockings and heels so he could fill in for the ‘legs and
feet’ of Gerda's absentee model Anna Larssen. Following this one simple incident
he stared dressing, and in time identifying as a woman. He became the beautiful
female model featured in his wife's best known paintings and accompanied her to
many social functions in Paris where they moved in 1912. It was after this period
in 1930 that this transgender pioneer Lilli Elbe went to Germany for what was
at that time experimental sex reassignment surgery which would involve four
operations over two years.
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| Gerda Wegener's portrait of her husband. |
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| Gerda's self portrait. |
The film stars Eddie Redmayne as Einar Wegerer/Lilli Elbe who was
nominated for Best Actor in the 2016 Academy Awards and Swedish actress Alicia
Vikander as Gerda Wegenar/Gottlieb for which she quite rightly won an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress. Also included in the cast is Ben Whishaw as
Claude Lejeune Lilli Elbe's lover, Sebastian Koch as Doctor Kurt Warnekros who
performed the ground breaking surgery and Amber Heard as Anna Larssen Gerda's
model and friend.
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| Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegenar. |
There was some criticism for casting a cis actor in the main role but I
believe Redmayne pulled it off but there certainly more to the story than was
portrayed in Ebershoff’s book. Although it has been opined that Lucinda Coxen's
screenplay allows a more truthful reflection of the story it still does not
tell the whole story including the fact that Gerda Gottlieb had lesbian lovers
leading to some critics accusing the film of being LGBT sanitised. A
well-intentioned film that in my opinion does not go far enough.
