Review of The Danish Girl (2015) by Watershed — 09 Jan 2016

Alicia Vikander's understated, empathetic tour de force is coupled with Eddie Redmayne's uneven, gangling portrait of a transwoman in a sadly unconvincing performance. He is among the most ambitious and talented actors of his generation, but unlike his unnervingly precise embodiment of Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", his turn as Einar Wegener/Lili Ebe feels largely forced, sans some scenes of painstaking honesty between him and Vikander.

The same can be said of the film as a whole. Its technical finery and the relevance of its subject matter notwithstanding, "The Danish Girl" dotes on itself too often and is too maudlin to be fully convincing.