The Danish Girl – Between Art, Identity, and Cinematic Romance

"The Danish Girl"

A quiet drama about courage, transformation, and unconditional love

Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015) tells the true story of Lili Elbe, one of the first known trans women to undergo gender-affirming surgery in the early twentieth century. Based on David Ebershoff’s novel of the same name and shaped by the director’s visually striking style, the film is, at first glance, utterly beautiful. On closer inspection, though, it leaves several important questions unanswered.

The film’s strengths

• Aesthetic beauty like a gallery of paintings: Hooper’s direction often feels like Impressionist art brought to life. Cool colors, symmetrical compositions, lighting, and set design turn many scenes into living paintings, creating an ideal frame for the story of two artists.

• The music tells the story: A quiet score helps Lili and Gerda’s journey together. It is never intrusive, always atmospheric.

• Gerda as the emotional anchor: While Eddie Redmayne portrays Lili, Alicia Vikander as Gerda is the film’s quiet heart. Her performance as a woman who loses the partner she loves and still remains loving earned her an Oscar for good reason.

• A point of access for mainstream audiences: Some may find it superficial that a topic like trans identity is presented in a polished Oscar film, but it still reaches people who might otherwise never engage with the subject at all. The Oscar certainly did not hurt in that regard.

A critical look at the film

• A superficial portrayal of womanhood: Lili’s path to becoming a woman is told mainly through outward things such as dresses, perfume, and makeup. Her deeper inner motivations remain vague. This creates the impression of a “performed” womanhood, which feels especially problematic from a trans perspective.

• Emotional distance: For all its visual beauty, the film remains emotionally cool. Many scenes feel staged, touching the mind more than the heart.

• A cis man plays a trans woman: Eddie Redmayne clearly gives the role great care, but the fact that a cis male perspective is allowed to tell, and embody, the trans experience feels like a missed opportunity.

• Stereotypical plot elements: The way Lili seems to leave behind her artistic side as she embraces womanhood, becoming instead fascinated by silk dresses and perfume, feels stereotypical, as if female identity were being defined through a kind of housewife aesthetic. It does not help that Gerda finds success through paintings of Lili.

My personal view of The Danish Girl

Gerda and Einar, an artist couple in Copenhagen, suddenly find themselves facing both an inner and an outer upheaval. What begins as a creative game becomes an existential transformation: Einar discovers that he is not a man. He is Lili. And that truth asks everything of both him and Gerda.

The film portrays Lili’s discovery of her true self with a quiet hand. It deliberately avoids melodrama and overt social commentary. Instead, the camera moves through carefully composed scenes as though wandering through a gallery. It feels like listening to a story while a soft orchestra plays in the background.

What moved me most is that the focus is not on enemies or scandal but on one person’s inner truth. Lili remains steadfast even as doctors, psychologists, and even her own body try to define her as “sick.” She follows that path to the bitter end.

Eddie Redmayne plays this transformation with intensity, sensitivity, and visual precision. What the film lacks, however, is a deeper emotional and dramatic arc. The relationship feels almost too harmonious in its crisis, and the conflicts could have been drawn more sharply. And yet The Danish Girl remains a film worth seeing: quiet, visually striking, and different.

Between beauty and a lack of depth

The Danish Girl is a film full of contradictions: visually opulent, thematically significant, but emotionally distant. It does not offer a realistic insight into the lived experience of trans women, but it does provide a first point of entry for many people who previously had no connection to the subject.

For some, that will not be enough. For others, it is a beginning. And perhaps both are needed: art that moves people, and criticism that pushes for more.

Recommendation: Anyone looking not for documentary depth but for an artfully staged historical drama will find something here. And those who let themselves be touched may even find a piece of truth between the images.

For all its flaws, this film is a step in the right direction and absolutely worth watching. Made with care, it brings the topic of trans identity a little closer to the broader public.

And here, I want to say this: thank you to my partner, who has supported me and walked beside me on my own journey. She had no idea what was coming either, and yet she loves the person within me, whether read as male or female. She was the one who gave me this film. ❤️

Yours, Lizbeth