This is 1926, Copenhagen, in a world not quite ready for transgender. Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) is an artist, though her latest oil paintings lack that ‘a-ha’ discovery a Gallerist seeks. Gerda’s husband, Einer (Eddie Redmayne) is an artist too, but he’s more interested in satin to skin, than brush to canvas.
With every opportunity to flit his fingers through a rack of fur coats, or the touch of a bound corset against his skin, Einer feels at home. So it doesn’t seem uncomfortable when Gerda’s model – a no-show for a portrait – instead asks Einer to wear ivory stockings. Then a dress. And before you know it Einer’s wearing enough female attire to say, “Call me Caitlyn.”
Ironically Einer’s wife is not curvaceous let alone exuding any type of sexiness, paling in comparison to her ‘Gilded Lili’ of a va-va-voom husband. This is when our own questions begin to surface…Is Gerda cast as the lesser looking female so that Einer/Lili might encompass the female role even more? After all, a beautiful wife would be a threat to Einer’s already threatened sexuality.
When it comes to sexual identity Einer is female. When it comes to sexual preference it should be female, but this is not the case. Henrik (Ben Whishaw) escorts and explores with Einer, seeing Einer’s feminine mannerisms as old-fashioned and provincial. As EIner feels more comfortable in his girly skin, his wife is having trouble with the monster she’s created…a once game of dress-up no longer fun. Should she encourage ‘his delusion’ and keep the wardrobe locked? Is he a pioneer of sexual change or a possessed demon?
As the movie evolves into the truth of what is and what needs to be, Einer morphs into Lili, a woman. One can’t help reflecting on last year’s The Theory of Everything. This story is like Stephen Hawkins in a dress. And with yet another wife who endures so much pain as the result of her husband’s needs.
What’s perhaps most surprising is that this film is based on a novel by David Ebershoff (the name “Lili Ebe” being taken from that of a river.) Director Tom Hooper, a genius is own right, has done it again….bringing us an Academy-Award-worthy story, bathed in white light from above, as if the movie itself is a piece of art. The characters are pure unalloyed underdogs, yet as confident as they are vulnerable.
Hooper makes every Copenhagen street scene glisten to touch, and every Parisian set a piece worth collecting in Art Nouveau through Art Deco. Hooper is clearly Victorian-reincarnate (The King’s Speech? Les Miserables, anyone?)
Redmayne’s tortured performance is exhilarating… whether man or woman, conventionalizing that of a transgender. His Plain Jane of a wife, rounds out his ambivalence in a simple performance of letting go.
With a soundtrack by Oscar winning Alexandre Desplat the music captures the melancholy, the longing, the hopefulness and the demise of a sexual pioneer.