The Danish Girl (2015)

 

Genre: Romance/ Drama

Time: 2hours

Director: Tom Hooper

Quick Summary: A fictitious love story loosely inspired by the lives of Danish artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

I tried to watch this twice and both times I zoned out.

This is another film that really drags out its runtime, except this isn't all that interesting. It feels very pretentious and feels incredibly shallow. For a film that is based on a true story and a real-life person, this is an insult to them.

I think what was the biggest issue is that we're supposed to Sympathize with the main person here, but I actually found them to be very selfish and just shitty I'll be honest. I spend more time feeling sorry for their wife than the person that the story is actually about. Something that actually made me a little uncomfortable is how they made the transgender accept that this is sort of sexualised and made into a part of sexual acts. Just feels icky to me to show it in that way.

On a good note, this is beautiful to look at with exquisite art direction, costumes and sets. There is a lot of location shooting as the film was shot in France, Denmark and Germany. The characters all flounce around in a sort of pouty stare to appear sort of picturesque and fragile. However, it can't distract from how bland and shallow this is.

This was a difficult and slow watch that I didn't actually finish. I had watched it years ago so I knew the ending anyway which is supposed to come across as touching and emotional but since you don't feel any connection between these empty characters, it loses all of its power.

3/10

"I love you because you are the only person who made sense of me. And made me, possible."

"How are you Lili ?

 Entirely myself."