THE DANISH GIRL
(directed by Tom Hooper, 2015)
*** (out of 5)
.
> This celebrated film earned the luminescent Alicia Vikander the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, though I’d have liked to see her win it for her astounding turn in EX MACHINA, released earlier in the year.
. It’s the fictionalized biography of the first transgendered man to undergo sexual reassignment surgery, and appeared to have everything going for it: great stars, a crack director, a timely and timeless under-exploited story, ravishing production values… And it delivered on all these fronts. But even the skilled Tom Hopper could not lift this story above historical human melodrama. What is here is good, but somehow, it appeared a crucial transition scene was missing between Ms. Vikander and the exceptional Eddie Redmayne that would have allowed us to see a bit more beneath the skins of the characters- how and why he would be driven to such an extreme solution, and why she would stand by supportively, when his choice turned her life upside down. The answers presented are just a bit too simple, too prate.
– As it is, THE DANISH GIRL views more like a constrained Masterpiece Theatre project than a movie, and the ending- though perhaps historically accurate, made you miss the seemingly AWOL scenes all the more.
*
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