Review of The Danish Girl (2015) by Steven K — 08 Feb 2016

It's brave; it's tasteful; it's sumptuously mounted and shot. The actress playing the long-suffering wife is fantastic. However, I had the same (minor) difficulty with Eddie Redmayne's acting that I had in his previous Oscar bait movie.

His acting seems perpetually in overdrive for my taste; too many crinkle-eyed melancholic smiles, too much of the darting eyes and nervous tics. The exact qualities that apparently make him a powerful actor to others rather grates on me a bit and yet he is undeniably talented.

I really like his fearlessness in these over the top roles he takes on. He seems to have stepped into the shoes of Daniel Day Lewis. However, I do think his performance was upstaged a bit by Alicia Vikander If you are discomfited by a male playing a female may I remind you that males played all the roles in Shakespeare's plays and it was considered no big deal.

Mr. Redmayne makes an entirely credible female (somewhat more so than Caitlyn Jenner actually. It's a beautiful movie in its way, if a bit languid and sad in certain respects. The cinema photography is gorgeous; the soundtrack serviceable and swelling on cue, pretty but overly familiar.