Canal Street Online Manchester

The Danish Girl

The Danish Girl

Wonderful Oscar winning English actor Eddie Redmayne is the leading role in this excellent story of love, artistry and transitioning. Though a true story, the film follows David Ebershoff’s fictionalised novel of the lives of Einar & Gerda Wegener.  It is set in Copenhagen in the 1920’s and tracks Einer’s pioneering transition to Lili Elbe.  Alicia Vikander plays Gerda and is best known for her roles in The Fifth Estate, Seventh Son and Testament of Youth.

She will be the starring role in the upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  The film is directed by Tom Hooper, famed for his directing of Elizabeth I, Les miserable and The Kings Speech, not to mention Cold Feet for ITV in his early career.  Lucinda Coxon created the screenplay from Ebershoff’s novel and the first showing is due at the Toronto Film Festival, Canada in September.  The film premier is set for 27th November this year in USA and 1st January 2016 in the UK.

This is a relatively small budget film of £25,000,000 and runs for 120 minutes.  Ironically the film is not due to launch in any Scandinavian country until 5th February.

Gerda Wegener was a Danish artist and painted Einar as a woman.  Following the painting becoming more and more popular, Einar decided that he enjoyed the limelight and started to change his appearance to female and dressed appropriately.  He called himself Lili Elbe and was lucky enough to have the support of his wife.

The film follows Einar as he underwent the first M2F transition and ultimately re-assignment.  It tracks and traces the events throughout the novel and shows the effects of Lili’s transition & surgery on the relationship as Gerda sees the husband she married slip away and replaced with a new character and personality.

The role of Gerda was linked to 5 other names including Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow and Uma Thurman.  This film was in its original planning stages back in 2008.  Nicole Kidman held onto this as her project for a considerable amount of time before difficulties finding a director forced her hand and she let go of it.  She was also down to play the role of Einar until such time as she let go.

I look forward to seeing this film and reporting back in the first week of January 2016. I am keen to find out if one of my favourite actors can pull off this role.  I am also interested in questions such as;  Is this yet again another case of the outside looking into transgender?

Will transgender be portrayed with skill or will it be found wanting as has sometimes been the case with previous trans roles played by none-trans actors?  The film has much to offer and with Eddie Redmayne I feel confident it will not let us down.  Time will tell.

@EmmaJanePreston

emmaoncanalst@yahoo.com

Published: 4-Sep-2015: (3287)

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